


To Last the Night

by Kei (adakie)



Series: Through Darkest Night [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Baby Blasters, Angst, Body Horror, Conditioning, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Magic and Science, Medical Trauma, Mental Breakdown, Past Child Abuse, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:30:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 62,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7619956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adakie/pseuds/Kei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans and Papyrus, once known as subjects 001 - S and 002 – P, will always remember where they came from.  The doctor and his lab still haunt their nightmares.  But when everyone else starts to forget, will the man who made them take back his property?<br/>((Sequel to Whispers in the Dark))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally getting chapter 1 of this posted, yay! I've been slow writing the next part and I normally try to have the next chapter done before posting here on ao3, hence the long delay. S-sorry about that. But I've made enough progress to put this up. Yay! (also, for people who are on tumblr, I'm posting there too along with some art ... i-if people are interested)
> 
> Since this is a sequel, you should probably read Whispers in the Dark if you haven't already. It won't make much sense otherwise. 
> 
> So then, let’s start with a bang shall we?

W.D. Gaster was in a foul mood.  He swept through the lower level of his Hotland based laboratory, a location once considered to be a carefully guarded secret, juggling papers crowded with notes scrawled in writing that was incomprehensible to anyone but himself.  Other monsters scurried around him, each one of his assistants busy with their own tasks as they hurried to set up for the first trial run of what might prove to be the doctor’s greatest invention since the Core.  All except one individual.  

“Must you always be in my way?” Gaster grumbled as his path was blocked a member of the royal guard.  He’d had to get used to having guardsmen lurking about his lab, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.  “Honestly, couldn’t Asgore have sent someone useful for a change?”

“Hey, don’t blame me.  I’m only here because you can’t be trusted.”  Despite his cocky words, there was an uneasiness in the guard’s expression and a nervous energy to his movements that betrayed the truth.  He was a fairly young cat monster, no doubt a newer recruit to New Home’s chapter of the royal guard, and his inexperience showed.  The feline kept fidgeting, twitching his long, striped tail and fiddling with the straps of his armor.  Clearly Asgore and the guard didn’t think Gaster was any kind of true threat if they’d assigned this recruit to guard him.  On second thought, ‘guard’ wasn’t really the right word for this.  'Babysit’ seemed more appropriate, and Gaster absolutely hated it.  

He still maintained that this entire mess was not his fault.  How was he supposed to predict that the soul fragments used to make the E2 series would regenerate that way?  And even if they did, the creations had been his and his alone, crafted from his theories and comprised of his magic, his bones, and pieces of his own soul.  That along with donations of magic and biological material from a few other members of his staff had created creatures that could look enough like normal monsters to go unnoticed in a crowd yet, when they showed their true nature, were strong and fast enough to take on monster kind’s greatest enemy.  No matter what others said, the being he’d constructed were more animal than monster.  And they were, by right, his property.  Only, for some reason, king Asgore hadn’t quite seen it that way.  Being the only one who truly understood the intricacies of the Core, let alone their best hope of ever breaking the barrier, Gaster was too important to rot in a prison cell for the rest of his life, but that didn’t spare him from the king’s wrath entirely.  He had been stripped of his official title and allowed to return to his work only under strict supervision with the stipulation that he would never experiment with weaponized artificial life again.  He still wasn’t happy about having to abandon so many years of promising work, but it was either this or face imprisonment for what others had been too quick to call a crime, so the doctor wasn’t going to complain.  Not out loud, at least.  

“As I have already explained, what happened with the E2 series was beyond my control.  It is a mistake I would have corrected for and not allowed to happen again if the king would only see reason and let me continue with my original work.”  

It had been going so well before his living weapons decided to do the unthinkable and develop fully formed souls of their own.  He’d never intended them to feel the way monsters do, nor even to think beyond the problem solving skills necessary to hunt the humans that made their way into the underground.  True there was a measure of uncertainty in dealing with new lifeforms and he’d had to attempt quite a few experimental procedures which hadn’t always worked, but the risks he’d taken had always been calculated ones.  It wasn’t as if he’d just been throwing everything he could think of at them and hoping something stuck.  There had been some procedures he’d deemed too risky to go through with and he hadn’t even started the E1 series without first doing rigorous testing on soul energy and the nature of Determination.  He asked no living monster to take any risks he wasn’t willing to take himself, which was why the creatures were so important.  It was also why he himself had been the test subject for the initial living matter stages of the Determination trials.  If he hadn’t known the good it could do, how this 'human magic’ could enhance the capabilities of a monster in the right doses, he would have never used traces of it to help in the creation of his living weapons let alone administered proper doses to 001 – S.  Yes the amounts he applied to his creation had been at much higher measures and mixed with concentrated monster magic as well, but all his testing and calculations had proven that it should have worked.  Even when it hadn’t and the small creature had begun to melt, the doctor had still been able to stabilize it and adjust for the resulting unexpected fragility for the next attempt.  Gaster wondered if it had worked correctly that time.  Perhaps if he gave Asgore enough time to calm down, one day he could find out.  Even discounting their potential as weapons, the E2 series were valuable test subjects.  

“So,” the recruit said, his tail swishing across the ground and disturbing the thin layer of dust that had settled there during the day.  “This … un-magic thing … “

“Anti-magic,” Gaster corrected, not even trying to mask his irritation.

“Same thing,” he said idly as he tilted a monitor towards himself, eyes skimming over readouts and figures that he had no hope of comprehending.  

The doctor slapped the young guard’s hands away from the equipment for what had to have been the fifth time that day.  “Not hardly.  Un-magic, as you so ineloquently put it, implies simple undoing, which is not at all the function of void energy.”

Gaster checked the monitor and the console it was attached to, looking for any signs of tampering.  He was far from the first to research the mysterious plane beyond their reality simply known as 'the void’, but he was the only monster still living who’d been part of the initial trials.  For year after that ill fated series of experiments, the void had been deemed too dangerous to be of any use to monster kind.  Gaster had turned his attention elsewhere, seeking more reliable means of energy and developing the Core and its electricity converters as a result.  As revolutionary as that was, energy alone could not protect them.  Having working lights and reliable heat could not stop any attacking humans.  Humans were a rarity in the underground, but each time one fell down into their midst they brought chaos with them.  Too many innocent monsters had lost their lives to the powerful attacks that even young humans could wield with ease.  The king had asked him to find a better way to stop them and capture their souls in the hopes that monster kind might one day use those very souls to free themselves and see the surface once more.  So he had.  Or, at least, he’d thought he had.  Now that his living weapons project was no longer an option, Gaster had gone back to the proverbial drawing board in search of inspiration.  And in doing so, he’d remembered the void.  

“The void, as you would know if you were at all paying attention to what we are trying to do here, is a level of reality beyond the world we know.  The space beyond our dimension, if you will.  It is a source of power that matches the magic potential of monster kind, only without any of the pesky limitations of physical matter.”

The feline guard flicked an ear, that nervous tell letting everyone know that he wasn’t as bored as he pretended to be.  “So why not just call it magic?”

Gaster barely restrained a long suffering groan.  He could feel a migraine coming on.  “Because it doesn’t behave like magic.  Void energy exists only in the void, it isn’t naturally occurring under any other conditions, and all efforts to bring that power into our reality have resulted in failure.  Without proper containment, anti-magic comes into contact with regular magic and when the two combine they destroy one another in a massive surge of raw energy.  If this rift gets out of our control, even just the ambient magic in the air could be enough to cause an energy surge big enough to destroy this facility.”

All his calculations pointed to this worst case scenario being distressingly possible if the containment system failed.  More importantly though, his own experience proved it.  He’d first begun researching the peculiar energy of the void with the scientist who’d discovered it.  The man had been a friend and teacher to Gaster in his youth, a driving force in his life always encouraging him to try new things and master what he’d previously assumed was impossible.  So when the man had asked him if he might like to join his team and tackle the questions of multiverse theory and inter-dimensional physics, how could he say no?  It had been a dream … until that dream became a nightmare.  

The energy necessary to pierce through the fabric of time and space was immense, but not unattainable.  Thanks to the admittedly shoddy power plant that had predated the Core and the freely offered help of several monsters highly skilled in various forms of magic, it had been a fairly simple thing even then.  No, what made it tricky was the precision needed.  The theory was sound and indicated that what they hoped to achieve was doable, but the calculations had to be extraordinarily precise.  Just the right amount of each type of energy applied in the right way on a very specific point, lest the power and force applied go awry and they wind up not with a perfectly proportioned window into what lay beyond their reality but a massive gaping hole into the unknown.  Either that or an explosion big enough to level the laboratory.  

The risks had been undeniably massive, yet not as big as the potential rewards.  The official goal of the project had been to tap into a new energy source, though for the researchers involved it had truly been an attempt to discover what lay beyond their reality.  They had accomplished both with catastrophic results.  Void energy proved to be unstable, all too easily combining with their own magical energy with violent and deadly results.  His friend had protected him back then, pushing Gaster and the few other researchers who’d escaped the initial wave out of the room and past heavy doors meant to keep energy of all kinds both in and out.  The man had saved their lives and in doing so sealed himself in with the dangerous rift.  He’d managed to close it, but not before the chain reaction of magic and anti-magic had already begun.  The lab had been left in shambles, the air thick with smoke and dust.  Gaster could not allow something like that to happen again.

“The last person who was able to fully breech the void was destroyed by that power, which is why we have taken precautions.  And should I catch you putting your greasy paws all over said precautions one more time, I will make sure you are never allowed in this building again, are stripped of your rank, and are discharged from the guard like the disgrace you are so clearly intent on being.  Have I made myself clear?”

The guardsman let out a small, choked sound, looking for all the world like he was trying to swallow a hairball.  “C-crystal.”

“Good.  Now, unless you happen to have some hither to unmentioned experience bridging the gap between dimensional planes, I must ask you to please shut.  The hell.  Up.  And let my assistants and I work in peace.”

There was an abrupt rush of movement, a tense silence that he hadn’t even realized had settled over the assembled scientists suddenly breaking as they hurried to return to their assigned tasks.  “We’re almost ready sir,” someone said, eager to try and appease him lest his anger be turned towards them.    

“Alright, all nonessential persons are to evacuate this level.”  He cast a poignant glare to the guardsman who squirmed a little under his stare and tried his best to appear tough.  

“No can do doc, orders are I stick with you.”

“Very well,” he replied with a barely restrained sigh of resignation.  “Then at least do us all a favor and stay out of my way.”

Most of the monsters present hurriedly finished their tasks and rushed out of the room, eager to put as much distance between themselves and the testing site as possible.  At last the final assistant made her way towards the elevator, leaving Gaster, the guardsman, and a handful of highly trained scientists alone with the ominously humming machinery.  The low, metallic thunk of blast doors locking into place echoed through the chamber.  The doctor checked each machine himself, looking over the readouts from previous tests to make sure that everything was in order.  There could be no mistakes with what he was about to do.  

“Raise the shield.”

Gaster’s chosen team were all highly trained professionals, so there was no scramble of feet nor hushed, nervous voices as they worked to establish the barrier that their experiment and their lives depended on.  Shielding magic, some fired by a clever device of the doctor’s own invention and some cast by a deceptively diminutive yet powerful monster, converged in the center of the room.  The two spells merged, flowing in and around each other like water, and solidified into a transparent sphere.  It glistened under the harsh, cold lights of the lab, faint traces of color reflecting on its surface.  The spell had been specially designed to let energy pass into it yet allow nothing out.  Once the fluctuations of its glassy surface stilled, Gaster nodded to another of his fellow scientists.  The man raised a long arm and fired a simple magical projectile at the barrier.  It passed cleanly through the shimmering skin with barely a ripple only to bounce off the other side and fall back into the center of the sphere where it dissipated harmlessly.  

So far, everything was going according to plan.  They’d run every test possible to prepare for this day, and there was nothing left to do but take the metaphorical leap.  Gaster checked the status of the largest and most important of his machines once more.  A single human soul sat at its core, perfectly passive and stable as it had been since it was placed inside.  The doctor closed his eyes for a moment, trying to steady the wild pulsing of his own soul.  It was now or never.  

“Start the sequence.”

Buttons were pressed, switches flipped, and complex codes entered on waiting keyboards.  Spells sparked, conjured up by hands almost as steady as the doctor’s own.  Lights flickered and dimmed around them as the electricity powering the building was suddenly drained.  The hum of barely restrained energy built into a dull roar for one pulse pounding moment and then burst forth.  Bright beams of magic and energy pierced the shining shield.  Power surged, forces converging and colliding at a single point in space.  The air shimmered red with determination.  The vibrant color turned dark, darker, yet darker as it collapsed in upon itself.  It spiraled down into a concentrated point of inky blackness which radiated blinding energy.  The spot shrank until it couldn’t be seen, until even its burning aura faded into the singularity, and then …

It was there, yet it wasn’t.  When he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye he could see it clearly, a small gash in reality like a ragged hole torn through paper, yet when he tried to focus only on that spot it was as if the rip wasn’t there at all.  There was only an overwhelming sense of energy, power, and wrongness.  The scientist took a deep, steady breath and calmed his racing soul.  He let his vision slide out of focus, the material world slipping away in favor of the bright, shining paths of magic.  His colleagues were bright spots dotted around the room, their souls brilliant white and radiating various colors that he knew quite well.  A rainbow of deep, vibrant hues pulsed from inside the machine, rich red swirling around them.  His own soul’s aura cast the space around him in pale purple.  The very air shimmered with their combined magical presence, an effect made even more pronounced by the massive amounts of energy produced by the Core not so very far away.  And at the center of it all, something both dark and brilliant glimmered from within the hole they had torn in the very fabric of their dimension.  Void energy.  Anti-magic.  All that power finally close enough to reach out and touch, though he knew better than to try.  

“Doctor Gaster, are the readings supposed to be this high?” asked a voice from over by the monitors.  

Gaster hurried over, his breath catching in his chest as he skimmed the ever fluctuating numbers being displayed.  The energy output from the rift was higher than they’d anticipated.  At this rate, it would burn through their shield and spill highly volatile anti-magic into the lab.

“Shut it down.”

“But sir, if we -”

“If we go slow we’ll be too late,” he snapped.  He already knew the protocol about shutting down the sequence, he’d written it himself.  Going quick there was an increased danger of the rift getting away from them and further splitting the fabric of reality.  However, if they took their time and did things properly, the shield would fail before the rift had been closed at all.  This was a lose lose situation, and they had to mitigate the damage as much as possible.  “Shut it down now!”

The clatter of keys rang through the air as the scientists assembled each rushed to their stations, hurriedly trying to force their assigned devices to abort the sequence before it was too late.  The two magic casters stopped their spells, but there was nothing they could do to take back the energy that they had already released.  All they could do was try to strengthen the shield, pouring new magic into it and making its surface shine with renewed light even as the rift at its center grew.  Gaster looked for the young guardsman who had caused him so much trouble but the recruit was gone, faint claw marks and the squeak of hinges as a heavy metal door swung back and locked itself being the only signs of his panicked escape.  The doctor hoped he was going for help, but didn’t quite believe it.  He hurriedly shut down the main device, the human soul contained within shuddering at the sudden change and throwing off waves of power that the metal walls barely contained.  He rushed back to the machine monitoring the experiment, checking the readouts only to find that the energy levels were continuing to climb.  The bubble of shield energy swelled, stretched thin as it strained to contain the raw power leaking into their reality.  

The rift should have collapsed in on itself without the power sources that had formed it, yet it hadn’t.  Why?  The doctor glanced frantically around the room, searching for some trace of magic or electricity left active from the machinery only to find himself drawn back to his own station.  A single strand of power connected the rift to the human soul trapped inside the large device.  He couldn’t tell if it was caused by the soul itself having retained some form of consciousness and lashing out against its captors, the dark, mysterious energy of the void refusing to let this energy source go, or simply a bond between two unstable powers that could not be so easily severed.  The one thing that the doctor did know was that this had to be stopped quickly or else the entire underground might be at risk.  

“Help me get this open!” he cried as he rushed to the device.  Hands, claws, and bright flares of magic pulled at the paneling, all but tearing the contraption open and exposing the glowing soul held within.  Even without any mechanic influence, the thread of power leaching away from it held strong.  There was no time to try and extract it by normal, safe means.  Gritting his teeth against the magical backlash he knew was coming, Gaster reached into the machine and pulled the soul free.  

He was too late.

A voice cried out in warning an instant before the barrier failed, its shimmering surface split open by a force it could no longer contain.  Void energy seeped out, a dark cloud of raw power that was there yet not.  Gaster saw the instant it struck the small monster who had tried so desperately to maintain the shield.  The other scientist writhed, back arched, mouth hanging open in a soundless wail.  His short, stubby claws raked at his face as something black began to ooze from his eyes and nose.  His skin paled rapidly, all color and life draining out of him.  Strange bumps and bruises sprang up across his exposed flesh as if his own magic were boiling just beneath the surface.  The doctor watched with morbid fascination, feeling sick with grief and guilt but unable to look away from the horrifying sight.

Void energy leached out into their world, latching on to each and every source of magic that it could find.  The air rang with voices raised in agonized screams, one of which he dimly recognized as his own.  The human soul pulsed wildly in his grasp, its energy burning his hands as it seeped into him.  It wrenched itself free, but he didn’t see where it went.  He couldn’t see anything anymore.  

Raw power roared inside him, invading his own magic until it became a violent storm that his body could scarcely contain.  His thoughts turned to meaningless static.  Something cold crawled within his bones.    

W. D. Gaster felt himself falling.  His soul twisted under the weight of this unrelenting power seeking to drag it down until all that remained of him was dust …

… but it refused.  

—-

A shrill cry rang through the crowded little apartment above Grillby’s bar.  In the past, such a sound might have startled the elemental into a panic, flames burning hot and ready to scorch anything that dared invade his home, but not any more.  Now it had him out of bed in moments, hurrying down the hall to a small room that, up until recently, had been his office.  He swiftly opened the door, radiating as much light as he could to announce his presence, his gaze automatically drawn to the makeshift blanket tent strung over a pair of small beds and the two children hiding beneath it.  

When he’d first seen the pair, it was hard to imagine Sans and Papyrus ever being comfortable letting him close to them.  Perhaps because they hadn’t truly been 'Sans and Papyrus’ back then, but rather '1-S and 2-P’, test subjects and living weapons crafted by the royal scientist W. D. Gaster himself.  He didn’t know much about their lives in the labs, in all honestly a part of him was afraid to find out just what it had truly been like, but he knew enough about the mistreatment they’d suffered to give him nightmares of his own.  So when the opportunity for escape had presented itself, they’d taken it.  The boys had run all the way from Hotland to Snowdin in order to escape their master, and still it had not been far enough.  

It hadn’t been anyone’s fault, not really, but the elemental still felt a stab of guilt when he thought about the limp form of 1-S being carried off to the guardhouse or how 2-P had broken down in bitter tears after learning that Gaster had reclaimed his sibling.  He should have been faster.  Should have seen the signs.  Should have done more.  But then, who would have thought that the royal scientist, someone so highly respected and trusted by all monster kind, could have done something like this?  He’d grown new souls from mere fragments, forming them into skeletal shapeshifters capable of more than any monster before them, and treated them as mere tools.  Gaster had created life, but instead of seeing the boys as the miracles they were he’d poked and prodded and tested them to within an inch of their lives.  He’d trained them to be weapons intended only for destruction.  Monsters weren’t meant for that kind of life.  They’d been through one war already, and it was one too many.  

Grillby found the two skeleton pups curled around one another, shaking so hard that the clatter of rattling bone filled the room.  They jump as he entered, huddling closer together even as their crested skulls whipped towards him.  Magic flared in their eye sockets, painting the dark room in different shades of blue shot through with flickering yellow and orange.  Grillby didn’t need to turn on the light, his own fire illuminated the space around him well enough, but he did so anyway.  Glowing eyes darted around the space, seeking out anything that might do them harm and finding nothing.  There was only the elemental radiating a warm glow of his own, standing like a beacon in the middle of the room as the children calmed their frantic souls and reminded each other that this was a safe place.

Papyrus transformed, easily shifting from a somewhat canine creature into what looked like an ordinary skeleton child.  The little pops and snaps of bones realigning were lost under choked sniffling and thin whines of distress.  He reached for his guardian with one hand, unwilling to release his brother but desperate for something more to ground him in reality.  Grillby ducked beneath the blanket ceiling and sat on the edge of the bed, back pressed against the headboard where the homemade tent was tallest.  The younger child eagerly crawled into his lap, all but dragging his sibling with him.  He pressed his face against the elemental’s shoulder, trembling and sniffling.  

“It’s alright,” he whispered, “I’m here, and I won’t let anything hurt you.”  Nightmares were a sadly common occurrence in his home now, one made somewhat easier over time as the kids allowed him into their lives more and more.  They were used to having only each other for comfort, and learning to accept it from someone else was a new experience for them.  

Sans followed his brother’s lead and shifted as well, his smaller shape more easily settling into the tangle of skeletal limbs.  He pressed tiny hands over his wide eye sockets, whimpering and gasping as shimmering tears leaked out through the gaps in his bones.  

“It was just a bad dream,” the elemental said as he pet their trembling spines, channeling warmth through his palms.  “It wasn’t real.”

“No, no!” Papyrus cried, his muffled voice choked by fear and anguish.  His tears were starting to soak through Grillby’s shirt, leaving a slight stinging sensation in their wake.  “Real!”

“it got him,” Sans sobbed as loud as he could, which admittedly wasn’t much, “felt it!”

Grillby’s flames sputtered a little.  He didn’t know what they could have seen in their nightmares, but anything that could affect children who’d already seen so much this badly had to be terrible indeed.  “What got who?”

“him!” the boy wailed.  His voice cracked and failed him, the raspy sound easily swallowed up by his sibling’s crying.  

“Him!” Papyrus echoed, the word muffled as it was all but screamed into the elemental’s nightshirt.  “It got him!”

There was only one person that made the boys react like this; Doctor Gaster.  The kids dreamed of him far too often, and those dreams were never pleasant.  Their memories would warp into nightmares in which they had never escaped the prison of doctor’s lab.  Sometimes one child would jolt awake, a pained scream trapped in his throat, absolutely convinced that he’d just watched the other die at their creator’s hands.  Not all of their dreams about the doctor were horrible, there were times when they saw him going about his daily routine in the lab as if nothing had changed, but even that was enough to leave either child shaken.

“It was only a dream.”  Grillby wrapped his arms around them both, freezing in place when the little skeletons shook in fear at the unexpected movement and giving them the time they needed to adjust and remember where they were.  “You are safe.  Remember?  Nothing can harm you here.”

But it was strange, they sounded almost like they’d had the same dream.  This wasn’t the first time it had happened either.  Grillby had to wonder if the bond these two shared ran even deeper than he’d previously thought.  

Papyrus clung to his shirt, letting out a cry that was equal parts sob and howl, but at least he seemed a bit calmer than he had before.  His trembling was slowly easing, leaving him to slump against his guardian.  He was exhausted from the fear which stole his rest and made his magic race.  Sans might have been quieter than his brother, but he was no less affected.  He had his small fingers hooked into the thick black band secured around his neck and was tugging at methodically.  The fused material stretched just enough to move with him but would go no further.  His hand shook as he pulled, drawing the collar away from himself.  Light caught on the tapered ends of long scars that marked his neck, slowly fading reminders of the past they had run from and the price he’d paid to escape it.  Grillby frowned at the sight.

During the short amount of time that Gaster had reclaimed this boy, his claws had been clipped so short that they oozed raw magic.  When he took on his other form and swapped paws for hands, the damage had carried over.  The tips of his fingers had been blunted, ground down to short little stumps that Grillby had feared he might be stuck with forever.  Luckily he was healing, but the fragile bones were slow to regrow and it was likely that the injury would continue to cause him trouble for quite some time.  He claimed that they didn’t hurt, but the elemental saw the way his fixed smile tightened into a cringe when he held something, how he flinched each time his fingers brushed against a hard surface, and how his small hands shook even now.  

He carefully wrapped his own larger hands around the boy’s, waiting patiently when he flinched at the sudden contact, and gently pried trembling fingers away from the black band.  Grillby pressed his palms around thin bones and radiated soothing warmth into them until the trembling eased.  “I wish you’d stop pulling at that,” he whispered into the uneasy quiet, “you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“want it off,” the child moaned, his recently restored voice thick and horse after even that small amount of crying.  Tears trickled from his darkened eye sockets.  

“I know, but for now we have to wait.”  They had tried cutting the hated thing off of him with the strong scissors Grillby used in the kitchen, much the same way he’d done to free Papyrus not so long ago.  Unfortunately, even though the band had been mostly deactivated and allowed him to shift freely between forms, it seemed that some of the safeguards were still intact.  The moment the short blades began to pierce the material, it had started a chain reaction of violent magic which lashed out at the boy and anyone touching him.  Only his sibling’s quick thinking had spared him from harm as Papyrus had instantly flung himself at the smaller skeleton and willingly let the dangerous magic flow into him as well.  It had died down quickly enough, but the sting of yellow sparks had still caused damage and set back the children’s recovery.  They’d been lucky, all things considered.  After all he’d been through, Sans was still fragile.  If the magic had been much stronger or he’d had to endure its full force alone, it might have done irreparable harm.  That wasn’t a risk Grillby was willing to take.  “When you’re stronger, we’ll try again.”

“i can do it,” Sans protested.  

“When your health improves, then we’ll cut it off and you’ll never have to see it again.  I promise.”

The boy began to complain again, insisting that he was strong enough to handle the force of the yellow and blue spells contained in the band, but a soft whine from his brother cut him off.  Papyrus wrapped his arms around Sans, pressing closed eye sockets against the smaller skeleton’s collarbone.  He nuzzled his sibling and let out another pleading whimper, prompting Sans to return the embrace and rest his cheek against his brother’s skull.  They called softly to one another, whines and chirps and trills strung together in a secret code all their own.  Eventually, Sans glanced up at their guardian once more, his eye lights dim but at least present.  “okay,” he said, reluctant and resigned.  

To be honest, Grillby was as eager for that day to come as Sans seemed to be, but unlike the little skeleton he was not willing to rush it.  Especially not when the pair looked so worn and weary.  “For tonight, you both need to get some more rest.”  He started to get up, but the younger boy glanced up at him, the tilt of his eye sockets sad and pleading, and it made him pause.  “Would you like me to stay with you?”

“Y-you stay?” the boy asked, unsure if he could even dare to hope that such a request would be granted.

“I will if you want me to, but if you’d rather not I don’t-”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his offer.  Papyrus reached for him blindly, pawing at his shoulder.  “Stay,” he whined, “staaaaay.”

“Alright,” the elemental agreed with a faint chuckle, “but you have to go back to sleep.”  

It hadn’t been all that long since the children cowered in fear at the sight of him, but after much patience and hard work things had gotten better.  Grillby had earned their trust in a thousand little ways.  He’d poured love and magic into home cooked meals and stayed awake during long, sleepless nights when fever or pain or nightmares like this one kept them up.  He’d caught them when they fell and hidden any signs of his own pain when they lashed out with wicked claws and growls fueled not by anger but by fear.  He’d payed attention to the subtle signs of their confusion and taken the time to explain whatever new word or concept had caught their attention.  Their room was kept mostly clear so that they could run, though admittedly it was Papyrus who did most of the running, with the beds pushed together and turned into a covered nest of blankets and pillows.  They had soft clothing that more or less fit their small frames and a collection of toys, mostly donated by the dogs of the Snowdin royal guard, that they were gradually learning to play with.  A shaggy rug was spread out on the floor, similar small rugs or flat pillows deliberately placed around the apartment in cozy, shadowy spots where they liked to curl up and rest.  The soft glow of a nightlight shone from beside the door, ensuring that the moment anyone stepped into the room the boys would be able to see them even if the rest of the space was dark.  The door was kept closed so that they didn’t feel like they were being watched, but not completely closed so that they didn’t feel trapped either.  Bit by bit, Grillby had made this place into a home for the children in his care.  Now they looked to him for safety and comfort, and that was a responsibility he did not take lightly.  

After a bit of arranging, the trio curled up together in the center of the kids’ blanket nest, Grillby and Sans on either side with Papyrus wedged in the middle.  The youngest had his arms wrapped tight around his brother’s waist, head tucked under the other skeleton’s chin, and his back pressed against the comforting wall of warmth that the elemental provided.  He let out a contented, if somewhat watery, sigh. Grillby tucked in both children with a thin sheet and draped his arm over them, careful not to rest any weight on Sans’s ribs.  The long, straight cut that had bisected his rib cage had finally healed, but the bones there were still weak. The dim light of the boy’s eyes watched him, weary but very much aware.

The light was still on, but the elemental did not get up to turn it off.  With him staying, there was no way the room would be truly dark anyway.  Besides, the extra light might help banish any lingering nightmares still lurking in the boys’ thoughts.  The blanket nest, normally covered in cool shadow, glowed a faint orange with his light.  He kept his flames low, mindful of the material above and around him, and focused on the particular way of burning that would make them crackle like a hearth.  It wasn’t much of a lullaby, but it seemed to do the trick.  He waited patiently as pent up tension slowly drained away from the two children, dim eye lights winking out as they surrendered to much needed sleep.  Only then, when all was once more still and quiet, did he let his fire dim as he settled in for the night.  If nightmares came to plague the boys again, he would be there to chase those bad dreams away.  

—-

As W. D. Gaster woke, his sluggish mind slowly crawling back towards consciousness, a single thought came to him; he was cold.  For someone who lived and worked in Hotland, that alone was cause for concern.  As the chill gave way to pain and his memory slowly began to return, that concern morphed into soul stopping fear.  His experiment had failed.  Leeching the power of the human soul to sustain itself, the rift they’d manged to open had run wild and spilled void energy into their reality.  He shouldn’t have survived what happened next, so why had he?

The doctor tried to move, only to find that what should have been a simple task was seemingly impossible.  His body felt weightless, as if only frigid air remained in his hollowed out bones, yet he could not so much as lift a finger.  The faint raspy hiss of his own breathing sounded otherworldly.  From somewhere off to his right, he heard the telltale metallic thunk of the blast doors opening.  They scraped along the tiled floor of the lab, pushing what sounded like broken glass and metal chunks out of their way.  Heavy footsteps echoed through the space.  

“You sure about this?” came a deep, low voice from somewhere near the doors.

A second voice answered, this one higher pitched and lilting.  A woman perhaps?  “They said the rift should be closed, at least according to their sensors, but keep your suit on just to be safe.”

Gaster tried to call out to the pair, hoping to get their attention, but the words came out soundless and painful.  

“Stars above,” the woman gasped breathlessly.  “This place looks like it got hit by a ceiling quake.”  

“Over here,” her companion called, “I found somebody!”  Footsteps thudded closer as the pair hurried over.  For a brief moment, Gaster hoped that it was him they’d seen and help was on its way, but they stopped far short of where he was.  Startled gasps of horror cut through the uneasy stillness.  

“What  happened to them?”

“No idea,” the man said, sounding faintly ill.  Whatever state they had found the survivor in, it wasn’t encouraging.  “They look like they’ve Fallen or something.”

“No, can’t be.  I saw my mother when she Fell and trust me it doesn’t look like this.”

While one of the rescuers tried in vain to get the unfortunate monster to respond, the other began clearing a path through what remained of the lab.  Gaster lay there helpless, listening as the wreckage was moved about.  Something large and heavy was deposited against the wall not too far from him.  He could feel the subtle vibrations through the floor as the monster began to walk away.  Desperate, the doctor summoned all his strength and tried once more to move.  His hand twitched, bones aching as he forced them to slide across the floor.  Something sharp touched his palm but he kept going, brushing pieces of broken glass aside.  The faint clinking sound they made as the little pile of shards collapsed made the monster pause.

“Hey, we’ve got another survivor!”

Gaster all but sobbed in silent relief as the pair rushed over.  Gloved hands touched him carefully, as if their owners were afraid he might crumble to dust at any moment.  He tilted his head to try and see them, knowing they should be close enough to make out at least their most rudimentary features.  Something fuzzed and skittered like static on a screen at the edge of his otherwise darkened vision.  

“Doctor Gaster?  Sir, can you hear me?  We’re gonna get you to a healer.  Everything’s gonna be okay.”

The monsters carefully extracted him from the ruined mess of his lab, placing him on what felt like a stretcher.  The back of his hand brushed against another body lying nearby.  To his horror, he felt the unknown monster’s flesh begin to crumble even under that feather light touch, dry chunks of skin breaking off amidst a rain of oddly coarse dust.  

New voices came as other rescuers arrived, the sounds blending together into meaningless noise.  Someone came and lifted the stretcher, sending Gaster’s mind reeling as the world tipped and bobbed around him.  He surrendered to the darkness that reached up to claim him until all that was left was the cold.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m just off to the worst start as far as speed goes, huh? I’m really sorry that this took me so long. Fluffy domestic stuff is often really difficult for me to write, and that combined with a creative slump and busy schedule with the local community theater led to this taking waaaay too long for me to finish. It’s still not entirely where I want it to be but I’ve made people wait (more than) long enough. I’ve not had the mental energy to do much more than stare blankly for way too long, but that’s finally getting better and I’m getting my spark back. Yay.
> 
> Also, just a heads up, if you have a laptop consider keeping a usb keyboard around for emergencies .... especially if you're clumsy like me ... (so very very happy to have a new proper keyboard again after WAY too long without one)
> 
> Just wanted to say really quick, thank you soooo much to everyone who read and enjoyed part 1! :D I know it may not seem like much, but every kudo or comment totally makes my day so thaaaaaank you!! <3
> 
>  
> 
> Ooh and if you wanted to see the art that went with chapter 1 ..... it's over [here](http://ashadowcalledkei.tumblr.com/post/147307355561/this-got-delayed-a-lot-s-sorry-about-that-but-i).

Grillby awoke to a twinge of painful stiffness in his back.  He should have expected as much with the somewhat cramped, awkward position he’d slept in.  The bed nest was just right for the little skeletons, but for a tall monster like him it left much to be desired.  Waking up with the boys though, knowing they were safe and warm and that they trusted him enough to take comfort in his presence, made it all worth it.  He was an early riser by nature, so he expected to find the pair still sound asleep.  However, much to his surprise, when he glanced over he found dark eyes looking back at him.  Papyrus was watching him closely.  The boy flinched slightly when he realized he’d been caught staring, but it was more from embarrassment than fear.  

“Good morning,” the elemental whispered, not wanting to spook the child or wake his sibling.  “Did you sleep well?”

After a moment or two of consideration, Papyrus grinned up at him with a shy, skeletal smile and nodded.  He was a remarkably agreeable child, observant and often wary yet kind and quick to forgive, especially considering where he’d come from.  Sometimes it just didn’t seem possible that this was the same little boy who’d run from him in terror and growled so ferociously mere months ago.  Then the elemental remembered why Papyrus had tried to run, how devoted and protective he’d been even when he himself was hurting, and it didn’t seem far fetched at all.  

“Would you like some breakfast?” he asked, already knowing that the answer would be a resounding yes.

“Breakfast?” Papyrus parroted back to him, excitement chasing away the last lingering touches of sleep.  

“If you’re ready to get up.”

“Up!” the young skeleton chirped, “up, up, get up!”  

He wriggled his way free and got on his hands and knees, bouncing high enough that he nearly dislodged the blankets draped over them.  His antics roused his sibling who, predictably, jerked awake in a blind panic.  The action sent Sans tumbling backwards and he might have rolled off the bed entirely had the wall of their blanket tent not been tucked in.  As it was, he was caught by the fabric and left suspended, not quite able to free himself.  That only served to heighten his alarm, and his eyes glowed bright as he searched for whatever had attacked him.  He let out a growl, teeth grit as if baring the fangs he didn’t currently possess.  

Seeing his brother’s distress, Papyrus whimpered a soft apology and easily hauled him out of his accidental trap.  He wrapped his arms around the smaller skeleton and nuzzled him like an over eager puppy until every trace of hostility vanished leaving only an easy smile.  A strange sound replaced the growl, something just as rumbling but higher pitched and with a louder, more pleasant tone.  Grillby didn’t know what such a sound should be called.  Maybe it wasn’t meant to be called anything.  After all, the kids had formed their own language in the labs, so perhaps the sound was theirs alone.  

“Well, since you’re both up,” Grillby started to say, though he was quickly cut off by a happy chirp as Papyrus remembered what it was that had excited him in the first place.

“Breakfast!”  The boy hopped down, springing off of the bed with the kind of energy only young children can muster early in the mornings, and turned back to help his sibling as Sans made his own way down.  The younger boy kept hold of his brother’s hand and practically dragged him out of the room, letting out a string of chipper sounds all the while.  The smaller skeleton still wasn’t as steady on two legs as he was on four, which was perhaps the only thing that kept the pair from sprinting all the way to the kitchen, but he was getting better every day.

Grillby stood and straightened the bed, at least as much as a blanket nest could be straightened.  He winced, his flames giving an almost imperceptible flicker, as he stretched his sore back.  He hoped it wouldn’t hinder him too much at work.  The elemental had only recently resumed his normal business hours, which meant he had a very long evening waiting for him.  In that regard at least, this day was off to a poor start.  The sound of playful barks and Papyrus’s bright, bubbly laughter greeted him as he strolled down the hall, and all thoughts of discomfort left his mind.  Definitely worth it.  

The boys curled up beneath the table to watch him cook, sprawled together on a large pillow that Grillby had placed there when he’d discovered their preference for the shadowy spot.  Something about the act of cooking seemed to fascinate them, especially Papyrus who had expressed interest in helping out with simpler dishes.  Perhaps it was the new sounds and smells associated with the act that entranced them.  It was certainly a kinder reason than others which sprang to mind, most of which the elemental chose to ignore.  

Grillby made a bowl of oatmeal for each of the little skeletons, stocking the table with various spices and sweet things he thought might go well with it as well as two large cups of milk.  He found the food a bit too wet for his tastes, so he chose some dry cereal mixed with wood chips for himself and took a seat.  Eager to claim the now familiar treat, Sans and Papyrus abandoned their shadowy spot and obediently crawled into the other chairs.  The brothers were still somewhat awkward with utensils, but they’d more or less learned to use them and were able to tackle the meal without making too much of a mess.  

Of the pair, it was Papyrus who was adapting better to this new lifestyle.  He was eager to try just about everything, even the things that scared him at first, and nothing made him happier than sharing every new and good thing that he found.  Grillby watched with a hidden smile as he experimented, quickly discovering how much spice was too much and which ones he preferred.  When he stumbled across the right mix of brown sugar and cinnamon, his eye sockets sparkled with light and he pushed the bowl towards his sibling, telling him to try it through a series of high pitched trills.

Not wanting to rush the kids, Grillby left clearing the table for later and instead set about cleaning the kitchen.  He liked to keep his home, and especially his cooking space, neat and tidy, so even though there was very little mess to be found he set to work.  Besides, it gave him an excuse to linger in the room without seeming like he was monitoring the skeletons, even though on some level that’s exactly what he was doing.  There was a fine line between keeping a watchful eye on someone and making them feel trapped, and it wasn’t one he wanted to cross even by accident.  He took his time tidying up until he heard the subtle scrape of wooden chair legs moving and the soft click of bone on tile.  Though he couldn’t translate the barks and chirps the kids used, he’d learned the meaning behind those sounds; play.  Papyrus let out a mock growl punctuated by an excitable giggle and, from the sound of it, scampered towards the hall.

Grillby glanced over his shoulder in time to see Sans change, swapping his small, harmless looking form for one that was significantly more durable and dangerous.  The elemental had grown used to this bizarre display and now could see the transformation as something fluid and oddly graceful.  It was natural to them, as simple as breathing.  Sans shook himself once, jostling the fabric of his shirt and pants until they settled smoothly over the new alignment of his joints, and let out a mock growl of his own.  Papyrus smiled brightly, practically shaking with excitement, and dashed around the corner.  With a flick of his long, bony tail, Sans leapt forward and gave chase.  

The fire elemental chuckled to himself and set about clearing the table.  It was probably a bad idea to let them run like that in the apartment, but it was one he allowed none the less.  After all, tag was the only game they knew, even if they didn’t know it by that name.  Admittedly their version had quite a bit more stalking involved, but the basics were the same.  Besides, the activity let them exercise in a way that they enjoyed and had even helped their recovery.  Bit by bit they were regaining their stamina, even if Sans was still somewhat wobbly and Papyrus was seized by coughing fits when he pushed himself too far.  The tracking practice seemed to help the older child’s vision as well.  Though his eye socket had healed and clearly still functioned, the bright light that often followed the elemental’s movements was proof of that, his sight wasn’t what it had once been.  Sans was still getting used to his diminished depth perception, but thanks to practice and playtime he was no longer running into walls.  Or at least, not as often.

Grillby deemed the kitchen clean at last and was just making his way to the living room when a blur of white sped towards him.  “Wooh, careful,” he said as Papyrus barely managed to avoid crashing into him.  The child stumbled and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath but still grinning despite it.  He let out a playful giggle and darted away.  Grillby had to stop himself from snatching up the energetic little skeleton before he could dash out of sight.  No matter how much he wanted to play with the kids like he would with his niece, this kind of life was too new to them.  If he picked one of them up without warning, even just to hug them tight or make sure they weren’t overexerting themselves, chances were good that the action would be seen not as spontaneous and fun but as an attack.  

“Slow down,” he called after the child instead, trying to remind him of the ‘not quite rule’ they had against sprinting indoors.  The pair were free to run inside, at least in their room and down the main hallway of the apartment, but not too quickly and not in the kitchen or any other room where there were sharp, heavy, or breakable things that they might run into.  It was one of the few things their new guardian asked of them, and though they were quite willing to agree they could be somewhat forgetful about it.  Grillby wisely stepped back and waited, knowing that the other boy was likely hot on his brother’s heels, and sure enough Sans soon came loping down the hallway as well.  He followed Papyrus at something between a run and a trot, which wasn’t exactly surprising even given the nature of their game.  Since he didn’t have nearly as much energy to spare as the younger child, Sans tended to play smart rather than hard.  

The chase led them both into the living room, where at last it seemed that Papyrus was cornered.  Sans stalked towards him, head low and eyes bright with mischief, but the younger boy wasn’t quite ready to let himself be caught so easily.  He feigned darting this way and that, the actions too large and telegraphed to be anything but playful, and let out another high pitched laugh before sprinting past his brother and towards the couch.  He leapt into the air as if to dive over, arms out in a stance not quite natural to two legged creatures.  With a wide canine smile, Sans reared up on his back legs just enough to snatch his brother out of the air, jaws closing harmlessly over the younger skeleton’s ankle and jerking him down to land safely on the cushions.  He hopped up onto the couch, standing over his sibling and letting out a breathy, hissing laugh.  Despite his own uproarious laughter, Papyrus thrashed about and pushed at the other skeleton’s muzzle as if fighting off a ferocious enemy.  

“Alright, enough playtime for now,” Grillby said, though he did hate to stop their fun.  He retrieved a pen from the coffee table and went to a calendar which hung on the living room wall.  It was a fairly new addition to the room, since he’d always used a day planner to keep track of things before.  “Do you remember what this means?” he asked as he pointed the pen at a white box which symbolized the current day.

Papyrus squirmed and managed to flip himself over, though he didn’t even comment when Sans transformed back and chose to sit on his legs.  The younger skeleton tilted his head to the side, staring up at the calendar and making a soft rumbling sound of concentration as he tried to remember the significance behind the neat, symmetrical lines Grillby used to mark off passing days and the sequence of the simple white boxes.  “Ooh!” he said at last, eye sockets lighting up.  “Week!  New week.”

“Very good,” the elemental said, drawing a slash through the box in question and reaching down to pat the excitable little skeleton on the head.  “And do you remember what we do at the start of a new week?”

Papyrus nodded eagerly, but a moment later his expression changed as the significance of the day truly sank in.  His face scrunched up as much as the magic infused bone was able to.  “Check day.”

“Checkup day,” Grillby corrected patiently.  “But yes, you’re right.”

Both boys let out low groans, Papyrus burying his face against the cushions while Sans flopped back over the arm of the couch in an exaggerated sprawl.  

“Ooh come now, it’s not so bad.  You know it won’t hurt.”  

The pair exchanged a look, oddly somber despite their antics, and obediently crawled off the couch.  Not even their best efforts could completely hide the stiff nervousness in their movements.  Unfortunately, their guardian wasn’t surprised.  They had established the weekly checkup routine a while back, after Sans had finally recovered enough to get around without assistance.  Neither of the boys liked being fussed over when it came to their health.  Grillby suspected that it reminded them too much of the lab and the life they’d been forced to lead before their escape.  Any time he had to take their temperatures, administered medication, or even check old wounds, the boys flinched and went rigid, the lights in their eye sockets going dark.  No matter how different their surroundings or how warm and caring their new guardian tried to be, it wasn’t enough to truly chase away their memories.  Unfortunately, Grillby couldn’t just ignore their health and hope for the best.  He had to make sure that their infections cleared up, that their wounds healed like they should, and that their illnesses didn’t return.  So they had settled on a compromise of sorts.  

“You first Papyrus.”

The younger boy pouted, making sure that everyone knew just how unhappy he was with the situation, but did not protest or try to run.  The act was really just for show, a sort of coping mechanism that let him deal with his own nervousness.  Actually, the checkup wasn’t truly necessary any longer either.  Papyrus had healed up nicely and his strength was returning, but they maintained the routine anyway if only as a show of support for Sans, who would still need the checkups for a bit longer to make sure he stayed on track.  Besides, after the awful state the pair had been in a few months ago, it paid to be cautious.  

Though signs of illness proved to be hard to detect in skeleton monsters, they were often even harder to see in elementals so Grillby was used to seeking out those kinds of small details.  He’d learned what to look for, how to pull his own heat away from his hands in order to check the boy’s temperature, and the natural flow of the small skeleton’s magic.  That magic had been steadily growing stronger as he recovered and settled in to a new life free of fear and pain.  In fact, his power had already grown stronger than Grillby had expected it to.  Logically he knew it had to take a lot of energy to fuel both the transformations that came so easily to the children and the destructive magical blasts they were capable of firing in their quadruped forms, but knowing that and experiencing it were two very different things.  Grillby was even starting to worry about random outbursts.  Young monsters often had difficulties controlling their magic as they matured, resulting in brief flares of power.  He’d have to come up with a way for the pair to practice their magic safely before it built up too much more.  

“All done,” he said at last.

With an undeniably relieved grin, the boy darted towards the hallway and quickly vanished from sight. Grillby chose to take it as a good sign that Papyrus no longer felt the need to supervise his older brother’s checkups the way he once had.  

“Alright Sans, your turn.”  

It didn’t take long to repeat the same procedure with the smaller skeleton.  He felt a bit warm, or at least warmer than Papyrus, but his temperature had been slightly elevated ever since he’d shaken the last true traces of fever.  It seemed like that was normal for him, so the elemental let it slide without comment.  Just like his brother, his magic was growing stronger as well and was already exceeding expectations.  And yet, his soul remained worryingly weak.  Even with all his other improvements, that one crucial aspect had not changed at all.  He was far from healthy, and Grillby feared that might always be the case, but despite that he couldn’t deny that this little skeleton was powerful.  It was a strange combination not often found in monsters.  Could it be because of the doctor?  Dogaressa and Dogamy had mentioned Determination, a fact which still made the elemental shudder.  Was that the reason why this fragile soul contained such strong magic?  

“So far so good.  Now, I need to check your ribs.”  

The boy’s hand immediately went to where the ties on a medical gown would be, only to find the soft, solid fabric of his shirt instead.  Even after so long, the habit was hard to break.  After a split second of confusion, he grasped the hem of his shirt instead and gingerly pulled it up.  Sans looked down, unwilling or unable to look at his guardian the visible groove that ran along his ribs was inspected.  The incision no longer required binding or bandages and was healing well.  Thankfully it hadn’t become infected the way the lacerations on his neck and arm had.  Even the deep punctures in his spine left behind by a rather frightening array of needles were finally starting to fill in without any sign of complications.  One good thing the elemental could say for doctor Gaster; he knew how to keep a sterile surgical environment.  

Suddenly there was a loud crash as something that sounded suspiciously like a chair struck the floor in another part of the house.  Grillby jumped, his flames flaring at the unexpected sound.  He didn’t even realize that he’d pulled Sans close to himself until the boy let out a pained hiss.  The elemental immediately drew his heat away, but not before the child wrenched free of his grasp and staggered back, looking up at him with blind fear.  Sans snarled, a deep growl reverberating in his hollow chest.  His eye lights constricted to tiny spots of blazing light which burned in the darkness of their sockets and his fixed skeletal smile twisted into a sharp fanged grimace.  

“I’m so sorry,” Grillby said, sounding much calmer than he truly felt.  One of the few perks of having a naturally quiet voice.  “The sound scared me and I lost control for a moment.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He waited a long, tense minute until fear and panic finally released the child.  Sans ducked his head, gaze fixed firmly on the ground.  His small hand was clasped protectively over his arm.  

Disaster averted for the time being, Grillby turned his attention to the cause of the crisis.  “Papyrus?” he called, hoping that the other child was close enough to hear him, “was that you?”

“ … yes,” came the tentative reply.  The boy in question peered around the corner.  “I d-didn’t mean to.  I just … I c-couldn’t stop and … “  He trembled, clinging to the wall’s edge in obvious fear.

Grillby tried not to take his reaction personally.  The children had spent most of their lives in an environment where mistakes were met with swift and likely harsh punishment.  It would take more than a few months to get past that.  “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“N-no.”  Slender fingers tapped nervously against the wall and Papyrus dared to look at him at last.  “You’re not … mad?”

“Of course not.”  Startled, yes, but not mad.  He couldn’t even imagine being truly angry at the sweet little skeleton.  “I’m just glad you’re alright.  I’ll come help you in a minute, okay?”

Dark eye sockets widened as Papyrus glanced between his guardian and his brother, putting together the pieces of what was going on.  He gasped slightly and nodded before quickly ducking out of sight once more.  

Grillby sat back and observed the other child, taking in his rigid, almost defensive stance.  “Are you okay?”

Sans nodded, though he still refused to meet his guardian’s gaze.  Grillby carefully took the boy’s hand and gave it a gentle tug, guiding him to release his grip and lift his arm so that the elemental could see what his slip up had caused.  Thankfully there was only a small scorch mark.  The pale, brownish splotch would linger for a day or so, but it wasn’t likely to cause anything more than a mild and quickly fading sting.  

“I’m so sorry,” he said once more, careful to avoid touching the mark.  Even his normal gentle warmth wouldn’t be welcomed right now.  “Would you like a wet cloth to put on this?”

The small boy shook his head.  He hesitated, fingers twitching as he debated his actions, and eventually reached out to pat his guardian’s hand.  The brief touch was gentle, if awkward, and when combined with a small whine its meaning became clear; Sans was forgiving him.  

“Thank you,” Grillby whispered, genuinely touched by the small yet powerful gesture.  “I should go make sure Papyrus is really alright.  Do you want to come too?”

Sans perked up almost immediately, a genuine smile gracing his features once more.  Hand in hand, they went in search of Papyrus, intent on saving the boy from whatever trouble he’d managed to get himself into.  

They found the younger skeleton struggling to right one of the heavy chairs that sat around the kitchen table.  He looked up as they entered, his gaze instantly drawn to the pale scorch mark adorning his brother’s arm.  Papyrus whined softly, fresh guilt flaring in his eyes a moment later as he realized that one of the monsters present wouldn’t understand what he’d said.  “S-sorry.”

“It’s alright.  Just be more careful next time, you could have really hurt yourself.”  Grillby took the chair from him and easily slid it back into its proper place.  He pretended not to notice the way the brothers clung to one another, Papyrus trilling softly in a mix of curiosity and contrition as he brushed thin fingers against the discolored mark on his sibling.  An answering trill and comforting nuzzle was all it took to banish his guilt, letting his sunny disposition shine once more.  

Grillby slid his phone out of his pocket and used it to check the time.  He still had a few hours before he needed to start getting ready for work.  A small flashing icon showed one new text message, and when he opened it he smiled at the familiar greeting it contained.  “Dogaress and Dogamy want to come see us before I open the bar today.  Would you two like that?”

The idea was met with admittedly mixed responses.  Papyrus, who had fonder memories of the canine couple than his brother did, was clearly eager to see the dogs again.  They had come over a few times since the pair took up residence over the bar, though their earlier visits had been brief at best and Sans had slept through most of them.  The brothers hadn’t exactly been eager for company back then, though that had clearly changed.  The younger boy chattered happily, even his normal words blurring into something nigh incomprehensible, about all the things they should do when the guards arrived.  Sans was more hesitant about the impending visit, but when his brother grasped his hands, beaming that bright smile of his, the smaller skeleton couldn’t help but grin back.  

This was turning out to be a pretty good day after all.

—-

A high pitched beeping sound echoed in a small, sparse room.  W. D. Gaster groaned softly, wishing he could block out the droning rhythm.  It was making his already aching head pound with every tone.  All he wanted to do was go back to sleep and lose himself in blissful emptiness, but the shrill sound would not allow it.  Every bone in his body hurt.  He felt strangely cold, as if he were lying in a snow drift rather than a soft bed.  Though to be honest, the bed wasn’t all that soft to begin with.  

Wait … this wasn’t his bed.  

The man’s eyes flew open and he lurched upright, only to regret the action a moment later as a wave of blinding agony washed over him.  He slumped back against the pillow, dizzy from the pain.  As his vision slowly cleared, he took in his surroundings.  Pale green walls and a plain white ceiling.  Small window with thick curtains drawn across it.  Medical style bed with plastic rails.  He was in New Home Hospital.  The soul monitor beeped at him, its tones coming faster in time with the rapid pulse of his magic.  He wished it would just shut up.  

“Awake at last I see,” a voice said as the door to the room was pushed open.  “Though you probably shouldn’t be trying to sit up on your own just yet.  You were in quite the accident.”

Flashes of nightmarish sights and sounds assaulted the scientist.  The lab.  The soul.  The void.  He’d never in all his years felt anything so intense as the eruption of energy that had decimated the laboratory.  Even now, Gaster was astonished that he’d survived it.  Had they managed to close the rip in reality?  His couldn’t remember.  His thoughts were tattered and twisted, leaving his mind in chaos.  They must have succeeded somehow or other, or else there would be nothing left of the underground.  But still, he knew it had been open for far too long.  How many people had the anti-magic reached?

“You were asleep for quite a long time there.  It’s good to see you awake again,” the newcomer said with a subtle smile.  She was a tall, full figured woman dressed in a neatly pressed white doctor’s coat which was tailored so as to not restrict any of her four arms.  Her round face was dominated by large, almond eyes, faceted like a thousand shards of black crystal, and a pair of cat’s eye glasses was perched on her small, impish nose.  A plume of white fluff puffed up around her neck like a downy cloud.  

Gaster knew this woman.  Her appearance alone made her hard to forget, an effect only heightened by her no nonsense professionalism.  Doctor Rupela was one of the healer’s who’d treated him after a near disaster a few years back that had almost resulted in a Core meltdown.  He and the others who’d been injured in the accident had been taken immediately to New Home Hospital, the one and only place of its kind in the entire underground.  Doctors and less professional healers from New Home to Snowdin worked there in times of crisis, which was exactly why they had called in Rupela.  The woman had a gift for healing injuries of all types and the knowledge to focus her skills where they were needed most.  Seeing her again in such a similar context was troubling to say the least.  

“I’m certain you must have questions.  To be perfectly honest, I have quite a few of my own.  There are some conflicting reports about what exactly happened in the labs and what might be responsible for your condition.  If you could tell me anything about what happened to you, it would be a considerable help.”

Gaster tried to speak, but the only sound he managed was a harsh, hissing rasp almost like static.  He coughed and gasped, each utterance of sound no matter how involuntary sending sharp stabs of pain through magic and bone alike.  A cup of water was gently pressed into his hands and he gratefully sipped at it, relishing the feeling of cool, soothing liquid.  “Where are the others?” he managed at last.

Doctor Rupela frowned, her feather like antenna drooping as a troubled sadness took hold of her.  “I’m afraid you’re the only one left.”

No … no, that couldn’t be.  Frantically sifting through his fragmented thoughts, Gaster caught glimpses of memory.  The sound of his assistants screaming.  The ferocious pull of foreign energy.  An unknown victim beside him, their flesh crumbling away.  Gaster had known the risks when he’d started down this path, as had everyone who’d walked it with him.  Risking life and limb was part of the job, and he’d made sure each of his assistants knew that.  He’d seen what void energy could do, but being part of a tragedy and actually being responsible for one were very different things.  No matter how he tried to push it away, guilt gnawed at his soul.  This was all his fault.  His assistants had been good monsters, trusted colleagues that he knew he could depend on, and they’d followed him to their deaths.

Sensing his distress, the healer rested a delicate hand against his shoulder.  “I’m so sorry doctor … “  Confusion flashed through her dark eyes.  Her mouth opened, forming syllables with no sounds behind them as she struggled to call up a name she should have known, yet didn’t.  Her gaze darted down to the clipboard she carried, the one that Gaster knew must contain his information, yet it did not seem to hold the answers she sought.  The air felt heavy around them, thick and oppressive, charged with energy that should not have been present.  Static whispered in the shadows.

“Doctor Rupela?” a young reptilian monster asked, knocking on the open door even as he stepped inside the room.  He shuddered as he entered the space, large eyes darting to the darkest corners of the room as if he thought someone might be lurking there.  “Can you come take a look at this?  It’s urgent.”

“Of course.  I’m sorry to have to cut this short mister … “  Again she paused, but the passing uncertainty was pushed behind a false smile.  “Ah, w-well, I will be back as soon as I can.”

The two monsters retreated, whispering urgently to one another about a patient that had just been brought in, and the door lock clicked as it closed behind them.  Even after she had gone, Gaster stared at the space where Rupela had been.  She hadn’t remembered his name.  That shouldn’t have been possible.  Not only had she treated him before, a situation which had resulted in more than a few long talks that the scientist was fairly certain had been pleasant, but he was the royal scientist.  He had created the Core.  Everyone in the underground knew his name!

Gaster shut his eyes tight, blocking out the shadows that seemed to press thickly against him.  Static crackled and hissed inside his head.  

And the shrill, unsteady beeping droned on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's hoping the next chapter doesn't take as long. It shouldn't, with the new keyboard and all. And in the meantime ... *polishes the first chapter of Ash and Bone*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh no, I'm sorry this is late! I meant to post it like three or four days ago, ooh gosh, sorry. T-T I spent more than enough time fiddling with this chapter, but woooow a lot of stuff happens in it. More than I’d intended actually, but a few things got added or moved. Well, anyway, I really hope it reads well now~. And thanks so much to everyone who did read (and extra thanks to those who liked it) the last part, you guys really made my day!

The rest of the morning passed in relative calm until, an hour or so before Grillby had to open the bar for the day, Dogaressa and Dogamy arrived.  The elemental was always grateful for their company, and not just because they brought little things like toys for the kids with them.  Their visits were the only real interaction that the boys got with other people.  Sometimes Grillby wondered if he should be doing more to socialize them and get them used to being around others.  They would have to strike out into the world eventually, after all, and it would be important for them to know how to deal with things like strangers and crowds without getting overwhelmed.  Playing with the guards and listening to the often raucous sounds from the bar below on crowded nights was at least a step in the right direction.  Grillby wasn’t much of a social monster himself, despite his chosen profession, so when it came to things like that he was grateful for all the help he could get.  

He and Dogaressa sat at the kitchen table and watched while Dogamy coaxed the kids into a game of tug of war.  At first they didn’t know what to think of the rope toy, but a quick demonstration later and they had mastered it.  It was two against one, the brothers yanking at their end of the rope with small hands and puppy teeth, throwing all their scant weight into it without managing to make the canine guard budge an inch.  Grillby found himself grateful for the fact that his laughter was, by his very nature, nearly silent when Dogamy smirked and toppled forward, feigning defeat with a bit more theatricality than was strictly necessary.  The little skeletons jumped back in surprise, still clutching their end of the toy, before hesitantly circling their playmate to make sure he was alright.  

“Aww, how cute,” Dogaressa said with a chuckle as her mate pressed his cold nose to Papyrus’s cheek, making the boy jump in surprise.  “They seem like they’re doing well.”

“Much better than they were, that’s for sure.”

Then again, almost anything would be better than how they were before.  Gone were the days when they shook and hissed at every sudden sound, afraid to even accept what they needed to survive lest it be some sort of cruel trick.  Now, in this safe place, they could stop ‘surviving’ and simply live.  They were comfortable enough in their new surroundings to relax, try new things, and enjoy themselves without the constant fear that had dominated their lives before.  They were expanding their horizons as they learned about the world, finally able to trust in something besides each other.  While it was admittedly slow going, their progress was astonishing to see, even more so for someone who hadn’t been keeping an eye on them day after day.  

Dogaressa watched the pair as they played, regret haunting her smile.  “What kind of heartless person would hurt such sweet little pups?”

The question struck Grillby as odd in a way he could not quite place.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just terrible to think about someone hurting innocent kids for so long without anyone noticing.  I mean, what if it happens again?”

“It won’t,” the elemental said with a certainty he was beginning to distrust.  It wouldn’t, couldn’t, happen again, because nothing about those boys or where they’d come from had been normal.  The one who’d hurt them … Grillby searched his memory for a name, a face, anything to identify the horrid monster who’d done this … and found none.  That was strange.  He was normally good at recalling details about people.  He latched on to the single piece of information he was sure of, hoping that it might spark something more.  “It was the doctor.  You arrested him yourself, didn’t you?

“Ooh … you’re right.”  Dogaressa stared down at her paws where they rested against the table.  They trembled faintly, betraying the distress she was feeling over her own mental slip up, and when she spoke again her voice sounded oddly distant.  “I … how could I have forgotten something like that?”  

“'Ressa!” Papyrus called, his excited yell pulling them both away from their tangled thoughts.  The little skeleton bounded over, mostly bipedal but still retaining some hints of his more canine shape.  His tail all but blurred as it wagged behind him.  “'Ressa,” the boy said again, following the nickname with an excited yip, “come play?”

Most people would have taken the sudden shift in Dogaressa’s demeanor to mean that she’d let her earlier confusion go.  After all, Papyrus had a way of cheering people up even when he wasn’t aware of it.  She regarded him with a big canine smile and kind eyes, making no effort to mask her genuine affection.  It should have been convincing, but Grillby saw the way her hand pressed too fiercely against his table and he knew something was still bothering her.  “Of course puppy.  What would you like to play?”

As Papyrus dragged her off, giggling when Dogamy moaned about being outnumbered, that last bit of veiled tension drained away from Dogaressa.  Grillby wished he could relax and enjoy the moment like that, but something was still troubling him as well.  Or, more precisely, a lack of something.  It was strange enough for him to forget almost everything about a person who’d had such a powerful impact on his life, however brief that impact had been, but Dogaressa as well?  That just wasn’t right.  The elemental clung to the scraps of information he’d discovered, suddenly fearful that those too might slip away from him and leave him with nothing.  It had been someone important.  Someone they had trusted.  The doctor … but who was that exactly?  He had vague, fuzzy memories of a tall man, thin yet imposing with a smug smile that made anger simmer in his soul, yet no matter how he tried he could not place a name to the face he saw.    

'It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he told himself, 'they caught him and he was arrested, that’s what’s important.  It’s over.’  

And yet, even long after he said goodbye to the dogs and went down to open up the bar for the lunch rush, a question still hounded his thoughts.  He should remember the man who had hurt those children … so why didn’t he?

—-

Gaster didn’t know how long he sat alone in the small, sparse room.  Time had lost all meaning to him, and he couldn’t bring himself to care if it was minutes, hours, or days speeding past.  Shadows rolled in the corners of the room, rising and falling like the heaving breath of some hidden creature, yet when he looked directly at them there was only stillness.  Static fizzled in his mind, skittered through his thoughts, darted and skipped at the corners of his vision.  He clutched at his skull, digging into the bone.  It should have hurt, but it didn’t.  He pressed down harder, dragging pointed fingertips along until the squeal of bone on bone almost cut through the ever present static, hoping he would feel something.  Anything.  But he didn’t.  

Eventually, the door opened and the echo of footsteps drew his attention.  Some distant part of his scattered mind expected more from the reappearance of doctor Rupella and one of her nurses.  They should see this too, shouldn’t they?   The pair should hear the skittering shadows snaking around the room and run in fear.  Or at the very least, their presence should break this spell that had been cast over him and silence the rising darkness.  He was a bit disappointed when the woman walked to his bedside like it was nothing, regarding him with a look that bordered on pity while inky blackness seeped from under the bed to curl around her ankles.  

“How are you feeling?” she asked him, patient and composed.  

He searched her face for any signs of recognition.  Nothing.  There was nothing but manufactured concern in her eyes now, not even the spark of realization that she should remember him even if the details were beyond her reach.  It was as if every memory she had of him had been stripped away from her.  

“I see,” she said softly, taking his distressed silence as an indicator of his own condition rather than the twisting reality he found himself trapped in.  “Well, that’s what we’re here for.”

She placed one of her small, delicate hands on his shoulder.  Her touch should have been warm, a comforting anchor in a world gone mad, but it wasn’t.  He couldn’t feel the heat of her skin or the pressure of it against his chilled bones.  There was only the sense of her magic, the way it tingled and pulsed through her, and how quiet and still his own had become in comparison.  

“You had very high concentrations of two unknown magics in your system.  Neither matches up with anything we know of.”  Her grip shifted as she clutched his shoulder just a little tighter, hoping to capture his attention.  Though Gaster couldn’t feel it, he obediently dragged his gaze up to meet her faceted eyes.  “Please sir, we want to help you but we need to understand what we’re working with.”

He turned away from her, gritting his teeth.  She looked at him like he was some poor, pitiful thing, some problem she had to solve.  He was supposed to be the one solving problems, not her.  He pressed his hands to his skull again, wishing he could cut through the crazed mess his mind had become.  This wasn’t like him.  He was a scientist!  He could do better.  He took a deep breath, though it did little to calm him, and tried to narrow his focus.  The full scope of what was happening around him was too much to take in, but surely he could find the answer to this one question.  It was a riddle, a puzzle, and he’d always been good at those.

Two foreign magics present in him that would be unknown to most other monsters.  One was obvious even in his rattled state; Determination.  But, the concentrations of the human magic he’d used on himself had been low, perhaps even low enough to go unnoticed unless someone was specifically searching for it.  Then again, that hadn’t been the only time he’d come into direct contact with human magic.  When the experiment went awry, he’d done the unthinkable; he’d held a human soul in his bare hands and felt the frantic, desperate pulse of its power.  Gaster remembered the feeling of Determination burning through his own magic, seeping in and searing the very marrow of his bones.  If he’d absorbed that much, no matter how unwillingly, he should have burned to ash or melted away.  There should at least have been some physical sign of it, but he couldn’t feel anything beyond the frigid cold that had clung to him ever since he woke.  It must have been countered then, but by what?  The most likely culprit was the other unknown magic that the healers had found in him.  The only problem was; there was no other unknown magic.  Only Determination separated the power of monsters and humans.  Every other aspect of the magical spectrum was shared between their species, admittedly with some noticeable variations, and the only other energy of its type that wasn’t human magic or monster magic … was the void.  

“That’s not possible,” he said.  Or at least, he tried to.  His voice came out warped and broken, tones skipping like the static he heard in his own head.  The way he spoke had always been a little odd, nigh indecipherable to some when he wasn’t deliberately trying to make himself understood, but not like this.  He’d never heard anything quite like this.  Panic took hold and dragged him down.  He should have felt his soul pulsing wildly, magic racing through him as it rose up, ready to defend him from any threat.  Instead he felt something as cold as ice crawling through his marrow.  

Hands grasped his arms, only noticeable in his frantic state for the way they pushed against him, trying to get him to lay back on the bed.  “Sir, please calm down.  I’m sure we can - “

“Go away!”  Gaster wrenched his arms free, instinctively calling on his magic as he thrust a hand towards the monsters trying to keep him still.  

Something was very wrong.  Instead of the normal warm tingle of magic, he felt a chill pulse through him.  Violet light sparked faintly from his fingertips, but it was all too quickly eclipsed by an inky black cloud that seeped out of him.  It curled through the air, wisps of pure darkness forming haphazard patterns as they reached towards their target.  The shadows that haunted the corners of his room rose up, churning and roaring with their silent voices.  

The nurse shrieked in terror, fleeing from the room as fast as their small hooves could carry them.  “Help!” he heard them yell, their panicked voice echoing down the hall, “Somebody help!”

Gaster pulled his hand back sharply, calling off the twisting darkness that he’d unintentionally summoned.  No.  No!  That wasn’t his magic, it just couldn’t be.  He had to be hallucinating.  It seemed the most likely scenario, one he might even have believed if it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t alone.  Rupella had fallen in her panic and was sprawled on the slick tile floor, looking up at him in terror.  Or, wait, was it fear he saw in her gaze or something else?  Something accusatory and sickened?  Static screamed in his head, the noise making it harder to make sense of the world around him.  Gaster threw himself from the bed, staggering as his legs shook from the effort of keeping himself upright.  Swaying violently, he managed to catch himself on the bed’s sturdy frame.  'Run,’ he said to himself, instinct or something that sounded very much like it weaving frayed thoughts into a single intention.  'Get out now before they come back.’  

There was only one way out of the room; through the door that the nurse had left wide open in their haste to escape.  He took a single, wavering step towards it.  No, he couldn’t go that way.  There were other monsters out there.  They would look at him, at the strange, tainted thing his magic had become, and see him only as a threat.  He turned away, stumbling as he ran in the other direction.  There was no other way out of the room.  No doors.  No windows.  No hope.  And yet, that little voice that wove its way through his mind said this was the way.  The only way.  

He stepped into the rolling waves of shadow and they rose up to claim him.

—-

Sans woke to the sound of familiar, excited barking.  He rubbed at his eye sockets, chasing away the last traces of sleep and the lingering unease of some forgotten bad dream.  Muffled, raucous laughter drifted up from the bar below.  Not so long ago, he would have run from that noise, frightened by the knowledge that there were so many monsters nearby.  Now, he could recognize the cheer in those distant voices and knew there was nothing to fear.  They were happy where they were, even if there were an awful lot of them, and had no reason to leave that place and invade his peaceful sanctuary.  He yawned and stretched, working the stiffness out of his joints before once more curling comfortably around the pillow he held in his arms.  The couch, at least he was pretty sure that’s what this thing was called, made a great sleeping spot.  Normally he napped in his other form, since this one wasn’t quite as flexible, but transforming sounded like too much effort.  

He heard a small thump from down the hall, quickly followed by others just like it, as something bounced across the floor.  The soft scratch of claws on wood followed it.  Sans shifted enough to prop his head up on the pillow and watched with half-lidded eyes as a red rubber ball rolled its way into the room.  Moments later, Papyrus bounded after it.  The younger boy scrambled into the room, skidding sideways with the faint squeal of bone claws, and snatched up the toy in his teeth.  He trotted over, tail wagging with such exuberance that his whole body wiggled, and dropped the ball onto the couch cushions beside Sans.

'Play?’ the boy barked.  

“we played all day,” Sans said, letting a hint of a whine into his words.

'I know,’ his brother replied, his tail wagging faster until it was a blur of motion, 'it’s fun!’  

Sans couldn’t help but think 'ya, and exhausting’, but chose not to say it.  It wasn’t as if he didn’t like the games the monsters showed him, he really did!  Playing was so very different from training.  Even the tests he’d like, though he wasn’t sure if liked was the right way to talk about his hunting training, were nothing compared to what the monsters called 'playtime’.  There were toys instead of targets.  Praise instead of commands.  He could stop or start or pause any time he wished without anyone telling him that it was wrong.  Though he still feared making mistakes and knew he must have made quite a few, neither he nor his brother had been punished for them.  Living with the fire monster was so different from anything he knew, but it was a good kind of different.  No, not 'the fire monster’, he reminded himself, the man’s name was Grillby.  And his name was Sans, and brother was Papyrus.  They had monster names now, because the man and the dogs that came to play with them said that’s what they were.  Monsters.  Not experiments, not tools, not weapons.  Just monsters like them.  Sans still wasn’t sure if he really believed that, he didn’t think that monsters were made the way they were, but if that’s what they said then he’d go along with it.  He’d rather be a real person than a weapon.  

Papyrus put his paws on the couch and leaned over, pressing his bony snout against his brother’s cheek.  'Come on,’ he whined, 'Play!  Just a little.’

Sans let out a small, hesitant laugh.  “okay, okay.”  He sparked his magic, letting his good eye light up in brilliant blue.  That same blue light shimmered around the little red ball and it wobbled for a moment before rising into the air, suspended by his power.

Papyrus huffed at him, though he was still grinning.  'Lazy.’

The older boy answered with an easy grin of his own.  He flicked his wrist and the ball followed the motion of his hand, rising up into the air before flying off down the hall.  With a grateful yip, Papyrus bounded off after it, leaving his sibling in peace once more.  Temporarily, at least.

Sans curled around his pillow again, waiting for his brother to retrieve the toy.  He could have dragged himself off the couch to chase after him, an option which admittedly did sound like fun, but chose not to.  He knew it wouldn’t be long before Grillby would come up the stairs and knock on the door, ready to greet them with kind words and a gentle touch.  He would bring them evening food, or 'dinner’ as the monster called it, and ask if they needed anything before he had to go back downstairs again.  Sans wasn’t used to those kinds of questions.  Asking for things wasn’t allowed, or at least it hadn’t been.  But, as he was still learning, the rules were different here.  Papyrus had even risked asking for more milk one evening and they’d both been amazed when the request was met not with a disapproving look but with a gentle smile and a cup of milk for each of them.  

Sans looked at the clock which hung near the door, counting the little marks around its surface to figure out how long he’d been asleep.  Yes, soon Grillby would show up with food and the three of them would eat together.  Then he would go back to the monsters who cheered and laughed and chatted with one another in that big, warm room that smelled like food and smoke.  When the man returned again, it would be time for sleep and he and his brother would curl up together in their cozy nest without any cold metal walls or locked doors.  It was nicer than any dream he’d ever had.  

The red rubber ball bounced down the hallway again, rolling into the room with Papyrus chasing after it.  Sans watched the younger boy pounce on his target only for it to slip out from under his paws and roll away, a situation that would have once struck both skeletons with panic over the punishment that failure brought with it but now was just another part of the game.  When the ball managed to roll behind the bookcase, Sans plucked it up with his magic and sent it bouncing away again.  They played that way until the noise from below quieted and familiar, measured footsteps made their way up the stairs.  The old instinct to run and hide shot through Sans like a bolt of yellow magic, but it quickly faded.  This was his home now, and he had nothing to fear.  

—-

W. D. Gaster was drifting.  Darkness stretched out into eternity all around him.  It was a vast, endless emptiness, devoid of light or life save for himself.  He floated in the dark, not so much defying gravity as lacking its influence entirely.  There was no up or down in this place.  Every direction was the same as the last, so there was no need for concepts like up or down.  This, he realized with muted astonishment, was what he’d seen glimpses of through that ragged rip in space and time.  This was the void.  

Nothing about this should have been possible.  No magical construct can exist in the negatively charged energy of the void.  When the two energies collide, all that’s left in their wake is wreckage and dust.  Dust like what he should have become.  Yet here he was.  Not the same by any stretch of the imagination, but still solid.  Not himself anymore, not really, but still alive.  Still determined to go on.

In this empty expanse, free of sights and sounds, Gaster slowly became aware of a subtle twinge of pain that ran deeper than his bones, deeper even than his magic.  He summoned his soul, wondering with muted dread what he might find.  It should have been brilliantly white, warm and shining with pale violet light that would illuminate the empty space he found himself in.  Instead, it was stained with something black and slick.  No, he realized as he peered closer, not true black.  Deep red.  The color of Determination made dark as night, its hue so blackened that it was nearly indistinguishable from the emptiness around him.  His soul felt cold as ice in his hands, and the pulse of his magic was slow and sluggish.  No sign of its once vibrant white hue remained save for two pale spots where the dark stain could not reach.  Gaster carefully traced his thumbs over the white patches.  At the center of each was a carefully measured wound that would never heal.  He’d done this to himself years ago, carving out shards of his own essence to create the E2 series, and had grown accustomed to the dull ache that had plagued him ever since.  Now that ache was the only thing he could feel, and it was growing stronger.  

If this dark color that had infected his soul really was anti-magic and Determination, though how it had not destroyed him entirely remained a mystery, then it should have spread to every inch of his soul, polluting his magic until only void energy remained.  And yet, because there were parts of his soul which it simply could not reach, it hadn’t.  So long as those pieces remained separate from himself, they would likely remain uncorrupted.  It should have been a comforting thought, but in that moment he could only see its implications as distressing.  The fragments of donated soul weren’t meant to be 'his’ anymore.  That vital core of any magical being was something that, despite his best efforts, he’d never been able to replicate, and without a soul, magic based life could not exist.  It had seemed like the most logical choice at the time to simply carve out a piece of his own.  Surely those fragments, steeped in mixed magic both natural and artificial, would become something new.  Only, now he knew that it hadn’t quite happened that way.  The E2 series were created to be tools he could command.  He’d never meant them to be a part of himself, and yet there was clearly still some connection there.  There had to be, or else the chaotic mix of Determination and anti-magic would have burned him alive until nothing else remained.  

So long as those pieces of what was once his soul were separated, they could not be tainted by anti-magic … but was that a good thing?  'Yes,’ he thought, 'yes it is,’ but doubt whispered back 'what if it’s not?’  Troubled thoughts hissed in the back of his mind.  The accident had changed him in ways he could not yet comprehend.  He wasn’t supposed to be like this, but what was the alternative?  Crumbling to dust?  No, he wasn’t going to let that happen.  He was determined to live, and to ensure that he needed his soul.  All of it.  

He needed to reclaim his property.  

—-

For the second night in a row, the relative peace of the little apartment above Grillby’s bar was shattered by terrified wails.  The elemental hauled himself out of bed, already on his way towards the kids’ room when he realized that something was wrong.  When nightmares jolted the boys awake, even when both of them woke at the same time, they only cried out for a moment or two before settling into fearful silence.  But on this night, that silence never came.  Instead he could hear a pair of threatening growls punctuated by high pitched whines of distress.  This was not the kind of fear brought on by bad dreams or troubled thoughts.  This was terror.  Grillby sprinted down the hall and flung the door open.  His light flared brightly, illuminating the space and chasing the shadows away.  All but one.  

The boys were on the floor, backing slowly away from a dark band of shadow that painted the wall by their bed with inky blackness.  Their pajamas bunched up awkwardly over skeletal canine limbs, but they didn’t seem to notice.  They each bared their fangs as they retreated, tails tucked tightly against their shaking bodies, magic light blazing from their eye sockets and sparking behind their teeth.  As Grillby watched in numb horror, the black stain started to move and stretch on its own.  It leaked onto the floor, spreading like a pool of oil so deep and dark that it sucked every glimmer of light into itself leaving only emptiness in its wake.  

Papyrus whimpered, backing away another step, and Sans edged towards his sibling as if to stand between the younger boy and the creeping darkness.  He let out a clicking hiss, bright blue light beginning to pulse beneath the fabric of his nightshirt.  His spine arched and he shuddered, rattling and scraping his claws along the wooden floor.  Grillby realized what was happening a moment too late to stop it, and all he could do was look away as a white hot beam of raw magical energy burst forth from the boy’s gaping jaws.  It struck the center of the dark mass, burning hot for a moment before dissipating with the telltale tingle of magic and a faint smell of something very much like ozone.  Sans panted, pale smoke puffing out of his mouth with each exhale and drifting from the collar of his shirt in hazy curls.  He stared at his target, a clean hole burned into the dark mass showing faintly scorched wood beneath it, tense and unblinking.  

The dark stain quivered, pooling into the empty space to fill in what had been burned away, but it did not stop once the spot was gone.  It bubbled and writhed, surging up in a rising mound of inky black which slowly reached towards the frightened children.  Fat globs of something slick fell away from it, splattering on the ground.  Slowly, as the dark mass thinned, a previously hidden shape revealed itself.  It looked familiar, almost like a thin, skeletal hand.  

Sans hissed and clicked wildly, his eye lights shrinking down to nothing.  Blue light sparked inside him, glowing like tiny embers which flared brighter with each frantic breath.  Papyrus slunk forward and pressed close to his side as if to brace the smaller figure, just as frightened and just as desperate.  He let out a strange, distorted sound that might have been a shout or a roar if a more solid, fleshy creature had uttered it.  The boy snapped his jaws in the direction of the dripping hand even as the pair edged back further, pressing themselves against the far wall.  Undaunted, the hand pushed forward, reaching for them as it stretched further than any arm ever should.  Something shimmered in the air around it.  It was almost like the glow of magic, yet there was nothing bright about it.  It was a haze of something that should have been sparkling yet was now dark, the light and life drained from it until all that remained was a dim sort of wrongness.  The not quite magic blinked in the air, and the children went frighteningly still.  They let out faint, strained sounds of distress as their souls lit up, spots of brilliant light shining in their hollow chests.  

Grillby finally remembered to breathe.  His flames had gone small and dim as he’d watched the display, disbelief silencing his thoughts even as fear sapped his strength.  Now the sudden rush of oxygen made him flare up, flooding the room with his light once more.  He was moving before the thought to do so even occurred to him, placing himself between the slick, stained hand and the children he’d promised to protect.  Though he had no idea what this thing truly was, the elemental was absolutely certain that he could not let it get any closer.  

He thrust his hands in front of himself, sending a wave of flame towards the living shadow.  The skeletal hand recoiled as fire engulfed it, thrashing in a way that seemed like it should have been accompanied by a pained shriek.  It shrunk back, sinking into the roiling pool it had come from.  Grillby kept going, inching towards the black stain until a wave of flames covered every inch of it.  The shadows writhed under a blanket of fire, twisting and bubbling as it sought to escape, but the elemental countered each movement and kept it contained.  He burned hot, hotter than he had in so many years, and his flame took on a pale blue tinge.  Grillby wanted to destroy this unknown thing that had invaded his home and threatened the children in his care.  He wanted to burn it until no trace of it remained, but though the slick substance roiled and fought, it did not steam the way even thick liquid should.  It burned, yes, producing a thick smoke which carried a strong, acrid scent, but somehow it just seemed wrong.

The living darkness shrank under his constant attack, not burning up but somehow retreating into itself until nothing remained but pale flame and a dark scorch mark on the floor.  Even after it was gone, Grillby let his fire linger, burning on the ruined wood for a few moments.  Where had it gone?  How had it even gotten here?  It had to be a magical substance, maybe even a magic entity, yet no magic he had ever seen looked or behaved like that.  A shrill whine pulled him back to the present and at last he let the attack go out, the flames of his body cooling back to their normal yellow and orange.  Frightened eye lights stared up at him.  The boys had never seen him angry like this before.  Few people ever had.  He knelt and reached for them, impulsively seeking to draw them close and reassure himself that they were really okay.  The pair flinched back, but only for a moment or two.  Yes they feared the power he possessed, but they feared the creeping darkness he had banished even more.  Sans and Papyrus inched forward, seeking the protection their guardian offered, and Grillby pulled them into his arms.  He clung to the little skeletons, hugging them fiercely as if that alone could keep them safe.

“It’s alright,” he said, his voice fizzling unsteadily, “I’m here.  I’ve got you.”

The boys shook and rattled against him.  Grillby snatched a handful of blanket from the bed, dragging it over and quickly bundling both children in the soft fabric.  He held them close as he stood, backing away from the scorch mark his flames had left on the floor.  The elemental quickly retreated to the living room, turning on each and every light switch the apartment possessed as he passed.  He deposited the kids on the couch, wincing in sympathy at the way they huddled together, their bright eyes darting about the room in search of any hint of unwelcome movement, and pushed it into the center of the room far away from the pale, ordinary shadows that still clung to its corners.  When he joined them, Sans and Papyrus once more climbed into his arms without hesitation.  They whimpered fearful pleas, begging without words for him to stay, to save them, to keep the darkness away.  He held them as they cried, doing all he could to take away their fears even when his own held his soul in an iron grip.  

Grillby stayed awake long after the children finally fell into an exhausted sleep, his light chasing away the shadows.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a bit sidetracked with working on my other fic and getting some art done for the big Undertale 1 year anniversary. Wooo~. But at long last, here's the next chapter. Thanks so much to everyone who’s reading this fic (and my other one too while I’m at it), you all make my week!

In an empty room, far away from prying eyes, a long, jagged slash carved its way through reality.  It was there yet not, existing in too many places at once to be truly real in any of them.  Power and potential swirled just beyond the impossible rip in space and time, offering a fleeting glimpse into the void which lay beyond it, empty save for one equally impossible figure.  W. D. Gaster stepped out into the real world.  

The doctor stumbled and fell to his knees, gasping at the sudden rush of stale air.  There was no air in the void, yet when he was in it he hadn’t noticed.  It hadn’t seemed to matter then.  That should have concerned him much more than it did.  At the moment though, he was too preoccupied with the new surroundings he found himself in.  He’d come here thinking only of returning to the world he left behind, not of any particular place, so where had that action taken him?  His gaze darted nervously around the room, taking in shapes and objects that were oddly familiar though he had trouble placing why.  A smooth floor, dull in color and dusty as if it were hardly ever cared for.  Sturdy tables made of metal and wood atop which sat scattered papers, vials of glowing liquid, and all manor of small gadgets in various states of repair.  A long, black coat draped haphazardly across a nearby chair, sitting just where he’d left it.  This was … home.  His home.  Not the grand, sprawling facility of the Core and the labs that lay hidden beneath it, but the small, simple laboratory at the edge of Hotland where he kept his own personal experiments.  

Echoes of the void skittered through his mind, buzzing and blurring into the same static that had haunted him upon waking in New Home Hospital.  Even the otherwise empty room seemed too cluttered and busy.  The walls of this cramped cage pressed in on him.  The shadows which hung thick in the darkened space whispered like voiceless sirens.  He longed for the endless quiet that the void offered.  Everything was so much simpler there.  So much better there.

_No._  Gaster shook his head, pressing his hands against the sides of his skull as if that alone could keep the whispers out.  Those weren’t his thoughts, not really.  They were … he didn’t know what they were.  He had no way to describe the compulsion that had come over him, driving him into the dark emptiness of the void.  Clearly the unstable mix of foreign magics in him had compromised more than just his senses.  Could he even trust himself anymore?  He needed help, but where could he go?  Who could he trust?  No other living monster knew the nature of void energy as well as he did, and this was so far beyond all his tests and theories.  

He forced himself to his feet, wandering aimlessly around the space as he struggled to get used to the feeling of solid ground beneath him once more.  Like it or not, he was on his own.  Even if he did have someone to turn to, would they remember him now?  Rupella certainly didn’t.  Even though they’d never been close, not even friends by any loose definition of the word, it had been frightening to witness the woman’s memories of him slipping away.  He’d become a stranger to her, his place in her world gradually worn away.  Was she the only one, or was everyone else forgetting as well?  And if everyone forgot … what would become of him then?  Just go back, the thoughts slid into his mind, subtle temptation that was so very much like his own voice yet somehow not, go back and become whole again.  A barely perceptible pain pulsed in his soul, thudding in time with the far too slow rhythm of his magic.  The holes he’d carved into his core ached.  

When he’d been on the other side, surrounded by the calming power of the void, the connection to his lost experiments had been all too easy to find.  He’d simply thought of them, concentrated on the missing pieces of himself, and known where they were.  Their magic signatures were like beacons across the stormy ocean of time and space, brightly gleaming in the distance.  Gaster had reached for them impulsively, some part of him knowing the action was pointless, and it was as if the world had shifted around him.  In that moment he wasn’t trapped in the void, he WAS the void, and under his influence the fabric of reality had no choice but to surrender.  Void energy bled into the real world, given form and substance by his will.

It had been all too easy to take hold of those stray souls, grasping the fragile things in his magic where they fluttered like caged birds.  They were complete.  He knew they had regenerated, forming something resembling a true soul from the simple fragments they had once been, but the true extent of that regeneration had alluded him till now.  He hadn’t had reason to influence their souls before, the collars had always been enough.  A fragment coated in blended magic could never be the same as a real, natural soul, no matter how convincing it looked, but these two didn’t just look convincing.  They felt it.  Their magical signatures, cobbled together from a mix of energies that had been given, stolen, and crafted, were distinct as any fingerprint and harmonious in a way the doctor would never have predicted.  Their souls sang together, two parts of the same whole yet seemingly whole in and of themselves as well.  It was an odd kind of song, somewhere between the complex thoughts and emotions of monsters and the raw instinct of animals, but it was a song none the less.  One they should not have been capable of.  

Gaster had been able to sense the fragments that had once been part of himself hidden in the core of each beating soul, and their emotions had filtered through.  There was kindness there, the compassion and care all monsters are said to be made of.  Intelligence beyond what he’d planned for, enough to learn and adapt yes but also to question, wonder, and dream.  Devotion to one another, linking their souls in a way that went far beyond the pieces they’d been crafted from.  Patience to wait, watch, and plan.  Integrity that dared to think of themselves as something more than tools.  Tiny sparks of courage and justice just beginning to form, kindled by new experiences and a way of life they did not yet understand.  Love, inexplicable and breathtaking, which bound them together and gave them strength. Monster souls could not grow without love.

But above all else, rising over the song of their magic in a clamorous roar, was the fear.  Fear for their own fates and for one another.  Fear of the unknown, as any sentient creature would have.  An almost all consuming fear of returning to what they knew all too well.  It was raw and visceral, lacking the nuanced reasoning of adult monsters yet all the more powerful for it, and as Gaster held those panicked souls captive it had nearly overwhelmed him.  

Without sight or sound to guide him, the scientist had used the beacon of that bright magic to show him the way out.  He would break through into reality once more and pull those stray fragments of his soul to himself.  But, to what end?    To hide them somewhere, secret and safe?  Possibly.  To make himself whole again?  Perhaps.   _To lock them in the void where no one else could reach them._  That thought was more tempting than it should have been, given the dangers of that realm.  Had the thought truly been his, or had something else whispered it to him?  He didn’t know.  The only thing he knew for sure was that he would not, could not, let them stay beyond his control any longer.  That became even more important when he realized that not only were the E2 series not alone, they were with someone who very much wanted to keep them.  At first, he hadn’t minded the sudden surge of magical fire lapping at the projection he had manifested into the real world because, much to his surprise, he could actually feel it.  After so long with only cold numbness for company, the shock of pain was almost welcome.  But then it continued, rising from a rush of heat to an all encompassing inferno, and what had been an invigorating change was suddenly too much to take.  Gaster was surprised that he’d been able to retreat from that raging fire safely.  He’d expected to lose a hand to that blast, or at least for it to come back charred beyond recognition, but that hadn’t happened.  The void had protected him somehow, it’s impossible power wrapped around him like a shield.  It offered safety.  Gaster was starting to forget exactly what it was he needed to be saved from.  

The doctor stared down at his hands, unbothered by the darkness surrounding him.  He slowly curled them into loose fists, fingers pressing against the edges of the holes carved through his palms.  Yet another sacrifice he’d made to create the E2 series.  Yet another sign of the bond that tied him to them.  Why had he not thought to look for it before?  Then again, connecting to the souls those missing pieces had become had been a strange and deeply unpleasant experience.  Their emotions were so powerful, running deep and unrestrained, and their magic was so familiar yet so very different from his own.  It was a fluid sort of energy, a necessity to ensure the basic functions he had designed them for, sparkling with color and life beyond what he’d envisioned.  And there was something … more.  There had been something strange there, though amidst the fire and chaos he could not tell which soul the feeling had come from.  Gaster might have dismissed it as a peculiarity with the unusual nature of the little soul if it weren’t for the fact that the other which matched it so well had no hint of that sensation.  Something had stuttered in that soul, pausing and fluctuating in a way magic was simply not meant to do.  What could have caused it?  Was it a side effect of the Determination used in their construction?  Was that human based magic causing the soul to become unstable?  If that was the case, could it possibly happen to the other experiment as well?  Could it possibly happen to Gaster himself?  A sudden fear jolted through him, the static of the void suddenly roaring in his skull.  He had to know.  

He needed to reclaim the E2 series, not only to ensure that the fragments of his soul were once again under his control but also to discover the truth behind the anomaly.  The simplest way would be to return to the void, using its power as his own to break through the barrier of reality and retrieve them himself, but the thought of doing so made him shudder.  He wasn’t willing to go back there just yet.  The void tempted him, promising the freedom of eternal emptiness and the calm, cool peace of silence.  If he were to run back there, he wasn’t sure if he would ever want to leave.  There had to be another way.  

The doctor wandered around his lab, idly riffling through old documents and half finished notes scribbled down in the middle of the night, searching for inspiration.  Reaching into an open drawer, his fingers fell upon a length of thick, sturdy leather.  He held it up in the weak light of the lab, admiring the meticulously laid out threads of magic that wove their way through it.  This one had been a failed prototype, the spells not quite perfectly meshed together, but the final result of his work had no such defects.  A subtle grin slowly stretched across his features.  If he could not go to them, perhaps he could give his creations a reason to return to him.  Gaster kindled his magic, his smile faltering at the dark, smoky curls that wound their way through his violet light, and sought out the crafted spells that answered to him and him alone.  

—-

Grillby paced in his kitchen, a thin trail of smoke chasing after him.  He clutched his phone so tight that he was sure there would be scorch marks in the shape of his fingers on its once pristine case.  'Pick up,’ he thought anxiously, his flames flickering and popping in agitation, ‘please pick up.’  The phone kept ringing, a series of chimes that would normally be almost cheery now inspiring only anxiety and dread.  Grillby wished he had the number for another member of the guard.  It was Dogaressa and Dogamy’s day off, and normally he would have been loathe to bother them so early in the morning since he knew how rarely they agreed to take time for themselves, but the strange, shadowy entity that had invaded his home had left him shaken to say the least.  He needed help, and there was no one in Snowdin that he trusted more than those two members of the royal guard.  

The ringtone that he had grown so familiar with chimed at him one last time and a pre-recorded voice took its place.  The elemental let out a frustrated groan.  He’d heard this message so many times now that he could practically recite the entire thing from memory.  He hit the button to end the call, glaring down at his phone.  There was no point leaving another message, he’d already explained what had happened last night as best he could three times.  All he could do now was try to wait patiently until he got some kind of response, but that was easier said than done when the children he was supposed to protect still whimpered in fear.  Grillby let out a puff of smoke as he turned his attention back towards the little skeletons.  They were huddled together on the couch, wrapped up tight in a soft, if somewhat worn, old blanket.  Their eye sockets were darkly shadowed with a haze of deep blue, the normally warm lights of their eyes now dull and faded.  The pair clearly needed rest, but each time they managed to drift off to sleep they would jolt awake far too quickly, fresh memories of terror invading their dreams.  

It was a bit early for breakfast, but if the boys weren’t going to sleep then they needed something to keep them going.  Grillby briefly entertained the notion of making them a nice meal, something warm and comforting that might help sooth the pair, but that would take time and he wasn’t quite willing to be apart from them for more than a few minutes just yet.  Even having flooded the small apartment with light to the point that the place was significantly brighter than he’d ever seen it, the elemental still found himself staring intently at every hint of shadow, unable to shake the thought that it might prove to be something more.

Suppressing a little twinge of panic, Grillby stuffed his phone back in his pocket and got some cereal from the pantry instead.  He poured a generous amount into a large plastic bowl, tucking the box under his arm for himself, and poured two cups of milk.  Not the best way to start a day, but it would do.  He placed the cereal on the couch between them, inwardly cringing as he knew he’d be picking crumbs out from between the cushions for months after this, and handed a cup to each of the kids.  Sans offered a raspy whimper of thanks, the magic and bone of his throat still a bit raw from the attack he’d launched the night before.  Grillby wanted to check the old wound on his neck, just to be safe, but didn’t dare push either of the kids too far beyond their comfort level.  They’d been through enough already and he was not about to make it worse if he could help it.  

A shrill melody suddenly rang out, shattering the fragile peace of the living room.  Sans and Papyrus both shrieked, jumping and darting behind the sofa.  Plastic dishes clattered to the floor, spilling a mix of milk and cereal across the polished wood.  Grillby jumped up as well, quickly backing away from the miniature flood.  He indulged a brief moment of frustration for the mess he was going to have to clean up, then stubbornly shoved those thoughts aside.  “Shh,” he said, though it came out as more of a crackle than anything else, “it’s alright.  It’s just the phone.”  

He fumbled as he fished the device out of his pocket but managed not to drop it as he hit the little button that would silence the ringing.  Two pairs of dark eyes dotted with burning specks of white watched him from around the corner of the sofa.  They paid careful attention as he knelt on the floor, making a show of putting the still buzzing phone back in his pocket before holding out an imploring hand.  Papyrus started towards him, but a soft whimper from his brother made him pause.  The younger skeleton followed his sibling’s gaze to the mess they had made.  Their blind panic melted into a different sort of fear, one born of guilt and regret.  

“It’s okay,” Grillby said again.  “I’ll clean that up later.  You did nothing wrong.”

His reassurance was enough to break through the guilt restraining Papyrus and the boy crawled over to him, his brother not too far behind.  The pair clung to his side, nuzzling against him, small hands grasping his shirt.  Grillby pet their shaking spines until some of that tension eased, then gathered them into his arms and settled back on the couch.  The phone in his pocket began to buzz again.  

“I’ll be right back, okay?”  He carefully shifted the boys off of his lap, lingering a moment longer just to make sure they weren’t going to jump down again or try burrowing into the cushions like they’d done last night, before retreating to the kitchen to finally answer the insistent call.  “Hello,” he tried to say, his normally quiet voice now a barely audible hiss.  

“Grillby?”  It was Dogaressa on the other end of the line, worry adding a soft whine to her tone.  “We just got your messages, are you there?  Are the pups okay?”

Relief washed over the elemental, a plume of pale smoke rising from him.  “They’re alright, no one was hurt.”

“Ooh thank goodness.”  He could hear muffled barking in the background as the two guardsmen relayed information to one another.  “Do you know what it was that attacked you?”

“No, I’ve never seen anything like it.”  Even though he’d done so already via three different admittedly frantic messages, Grillby described the events of the previous night once more.  He did his best to stay calm and recount every little detail about the mystery entity that had snuck into his home.  He told her how it had come from nowhere, leaking out of the darkness, and had moved with focused intent that was impossible to ignore.  The elemental wished he could say that he’d defeated the thing, perhaps even dusted it, but he knew better than that.  The thing had fled, retreating back to whichever secret corner of the underground it had spawned from, and he had no way of knowing when or where it might appear again.  “The kids don’t feel safe.  Neither do I,” he admitted.

“That doesn’t sound like any kind of magic I’ve ever heard of.  I … I’m sorry.  One of us can come stay with you, just in case it comes back, but without any leads we’ve got no one to search for.  I wish there was something more that we could do, but … ”  She trailed off into a soft, worried whimper.  

Grillby felt like he’d been doused with cold water.  He hadn’t been expecting some kind of miracle fix, not really, but he’d hoped that the guards might know at least a little something.  Instead he was just as lost as before.  Well if the magic was a dead end, then perhaps there was some motive that might shed a little light on things.  Something had been targeting the boys, that much was obvious.  The problem was, very few individuals in the entire underground even knew that they existed, and even fewer had reason to wish them any harm.  Only … had the bizarre apparition meant to harm them?  It had done something to the kids, certainly, but if it had the power to affect their souls that way then what was to stop it from hurting them if it wanted to?  And it wasn’t just the lack of true attack from the entity that bothered Grillby.  He couldn’t quite shake the strange sense familiarity.  He recognized that grasping hand that had risen out of the darkness, he just couldn’t quite remember how.  

“Do you think it could have been the doctor?” he asked, following the thin thread of reason through otherwise disjointed glimpses of memory.  That was the only person he could think of who knew about the children and might possibly hold any sort of ill will towards them, though how someone like that could manage what he’d seen was a mystery he couldn’t begin to solve.  

Dogaressa was silent for a long moment, and even when she returned she sounded oddly distant.  “Who?”

“The doctor.  The one who made the kids.”

“Grillby, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.  The boys weren’t 'made’, they couldn’t have been.”

The elemental stood there clutching his phone, crackling in stunned silence.  Dogaressa was right, how could someone just craft monster children like that?  It was absurd.  It was … it was the truth!  He knew it.  He’d heard it from the kids themselves and been there moments after their creator had come to take one of the pair away.  It had happened.  It was real.  Why was he letting someone convince him otherwise?  No, that wasn’t it.  It was like his own thoughts were trying to convince him.  He clung to the truth, fighting off tempting lies that would have been so easy to believe.  The children were shapeshifters.  He and the guard had found them at the edge of the woods behind his bar.  They’d been created by doctor …. someone, for … something … he couldn’t remember.  Why didn’t he remember?!  

Twin howls of pain cut through the tense silence.  Grillby whirled towards the open kitchen door, grasping its frame so tightly that the wood began to scorch.  Blue and yellow light flared in the living room, casting writhing shadows on the walls.

Dogaressa let out a high pitched whine that made the pone’s speaker crackle.  “What’s going on?!”

“I have to go!” Grillby yelled, desperately trying to make himself heard over the sound of the children’s wailing.  He hit the 'end’ button and jammed his phone back in his pocket as he sprinted towards the couch.  The elemental hit the floor, landing on his knees in a puddle of milk that soaked into his pants and stung his fiery skin.  He hardly noticed.

Papyrus had his arms wrapped tight around Sans, the two of them shaking and spasming as magic cast by unseen hands assaulted them.  Dark blue light washed over their small bodies, smothering the souls that beat frantically in their chests, its oppressive glow shot through with bolts of dazzling, electrified yellow.  Grillby reached for them, unsure if he could stop such an attack but desperate to at least try.  A stray spark of yellow magic jumped to his outstretched hand.  He pulled back in shock, hand stinging, flames paling as something more than magic flooded into him.  He’d felt this before.  The collar.  The magic was coming from the collar!  That black band had been woven with specially crafted spells meant to suppress the powerful, dangerous magic that the children possessed.  That’s right, the boys were dangerous.  They’d once been … they were meant to be …

The details slipped away from him, drifting beyond the elemental’s reach like a dream upon waking.  All he had left was the vague impression that, whatever it was, it had been important.  He didn’t have time to dwell on that now, not when the children in his care needed him.  The spells came from the seemingly unbreakable collar locked around Sans’s neck.  Without someone there to help anchor him, taking the brunt of that punishing magic, they would overwhelm the little skeleton.  His brother knew that, and Papyrus willingly clutched the smaller figure close, taking on that pain for him.  If he could do nothing else, Grillby would at least ensure that they did not face that punishment alone.  Bracing himself, the elemental pulled both children into his lap.

Blue magic washed over him, dimming his flames and tinting them with a dark, unnatural hue.  He felt the spell try to drag him down, pulling at his core until he felt heavy as led.  Even just a third of the collar’s power was almost overwhelming.  Bolts of yellow jumped between the trio, eliciting twitches and yelps of pain.  Sans was frantically tugging at the band, pulling it as far away from the sensitive, scarred bones of his neck as he could.  His hands shook wildly, half-healed fingers jolting with each hit of yellow magic.  Every time he lost his grip, he clawed and scraped until he once more had the hated material in his grasp, yanking at it in futile protest.  Grillby wrapped his own fingers around the thick leather, taking it from the panicked child who began pulling at the fabric of his shirt instead.  Fueled by pain and desperation, the elemental tried to channel his heat into his hand, hoping to burn through the band and free the three of them from its devastating spell.  He poured everything he had into that narrow strip of leather, but the blue magic had hold of his core and was dragging him down, pulling his heat away.  He could hardly muster enough energy to heat a pan, let alone burn through leather.  Grillby wrapped his hand tighter around the band, pulling it as far away from the child it ensnared as he could, channeling its energy into himself.  

He didn’t know how long that magical assault lasted, only that when it finally died down it left the three of them slumped against the couch, too exhausted to move.  The elemental’s fire was low, the last traces of dark blue slowly burning away as his natural orange and yellow gradually began to shine through once more.  His legs ached, pants still soaked in spilled milk.  Stray yellow sparks glimmered and danced between the children’s delicate bones.  Papyrus whimpered softly, his pale face streaked with tear tracks, thin hands twitching as they clutched his guardian’s shirt.  

“off,” Sans moaned as he pressed his face against Grillby’s sleeve, tears and sweat seeping into the material.

“We’ll get it off,” the elemental said in a harsh, hissing whisper.  “We’ll find a way.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After far, far too long … it’s another chapter of To Last the Night. 
> 
> Okay, so, why the heck did this take me ages … well, because I wasn’t happy with it. It was getting too rushed, at least for me, so this and the subsequent chapter outlines needed a bit of a rework. I wound up adding a chapter and working on parts 5 through 7 all at once, and now I’m finally happy with how it’s reading again. Yay! (watch me be the only one pleased with this chapter since it really is a breather, ooh man) 
> 
> S-sorry it took me so long to get this right …

It was the end of the latest in a string of very long, very stressful days, and Dogaressa wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with her partner and sleep till next Tuesday.  Between the long hours of her normal job and the frightening mystery she now found herself faced with, she was worn out in every possible way.  Even the few hours of rest she’d managed to get hadn’t truly been what she could call pleasant.  Formless nightmares invaded her sleep and left her wide awake and shaking with the echoes of some distant fear.  Try as she might, she never could remember what it was that woke her.  During the day, she masked her distress behind an easy confidence that she’d mastered long ago.  The people of Snowdin looked to the royal guard to handle things and keep everyone safe.  If they saw how troubled she was, there would be questions which would lead to rumors which in turn would spread fear and doubt through the town.  It had happened before, and Dogaressa was determined to not let it happen again even if that meant keeping her own problems carefully concealed.  No one ever said being a member of the royal guard was easy.  

She poured herself a mug of strong coffee and downed half of it in one swig.  A familiar scent wafted her way, letting her know that Dogamy was close by long before the sound of the front door opening reached her ears.  “Back so soon?” she asked from her seat at their cluttered kitchen table, her tail wagging at the sight of him.  “I thought you were going to watch the pups tonight.”

“Grillby sent me home.  I kept falling asleep.”  Dogamy certainly did look exhausted as he shuffled his way towards her, his battle ax dragging the ground behind him.  Normally neither of the dogs would have taken such a dangerous weapon with them when visiting the bartender, but this visit hadn’t exactly been social.  They’d been taking turns standing guard at Grillby’s apartment as often as they could, on the lookout for any sign of the unexplainable magic that had invaded the place not too long ago.  Dogaressa hated the fact that they couldn’t do more.  They’d been over every inch of the apartment, and even of the bar below it, searching for clues that might show them where the attack had come from.  Though they’d caught the scent of magic there, it had been strange and unfamiliar, its almost rotted sweetness unlike any magic or monster the pair had ever encountered.  What’s worse, even though the scent was distinctive, there had been no trail of it left behind for them to follow.  It was as if whatever it was had appeared out of thin air, and now all they could do was wait to see if it would try and come back.

Dogaressa pulled her mate close, giving his cheek a little lick.  The last few days had been difficult to say the least and the long, sleepless nights were catching up with everyone.  “I’ll head over there when I’ve finished with these,” she said, gesturing to the documents she had spread out in front of her.  

In the few hours she’d managed to spare, Dogaressa had gone looking for information about the pair of brothers their friend had taken in.  With no other leads as to what could be behind the attack, she’d hoped that there might be some clues buried in the records of their discovery and the unfortunate misunderstandings that had occurred.  It had been surprisingly difficult to find the reports she and the other guards had written up about the incident.  No one seemed to remember where they were or who had filed what.  So, while Greater Dog handled the daily patrol, Dogaressa had made it her own personal mission to go through the ocean of paperwork and find every last scrap of information about the skeletal pups.  Even after turning the Pound practically upside down in her quest, there still wasn’t much to be had.  Just a small stack of pages, currently fanned out on her kitchen table, documented the bizarre events of their arrival and the impact the pair had made on Snowdin.  

Dogamy leaned over her, picking up the page closest to him.  “Dangerous animal sighted,” he read aloud, shaking his head with a small, joyless grin.  “Why did we ever think those sweet little pups were dangerous?”

“They are though.  Or, they can be.”  Technically most monsters could be dangerous, especially children who haven’t fully mastered their own magic, and those two had some powerful magic in them.  It was no wonder people had been scared.  Even Dogaressa had been afraid of them at first, wary of the otherworldly creature that was so nearly canine yet very much not.  The fact that Sans had attacked her friend and her mate with that devastating magical blast of his hadn’t helped matters.  Not that she blamed him for it now.  He’d been just as frightened as they were, so he’d lashed out to protect himself and his brother.  She still regretted the way she’d handled things back then, how she’d been blinded by the unknown otherness of the creature before her and had failed to see the signs that this was something more than just an animal.  Sans and Papyrus had forgiven her for what she and the guard had done, but she wasn’t sure if she could forgive herself just yet.  

Even though it had been a last minute decision born of a desperate lack of options, Dogaressa was glad that she and the others had entrusted Papyrus, and later Sans, to Grillby.  His calm patience was just what they needed to feel safe in this new environment.  Or at least, it had been.  Even after the sanctuary of their new home had been so violently invaded, they looked to the elemental for protection and comfort.  The wild creatures in these reports would never have trusted someone enough to do that.  They were like completely different monsters now.  No, as much as she hated to admit it, that wasn’t entirely accurate.  The truth was, they hadn’t acted like monsters at all before.  They had been scared and hurt and altogether wild.  She knew all this, yet as she read over the words she and her fellow guardsmen had written, she too found it hard to connect the reports of a captured and feral magical animal to the sweet, timid children she’d come to know.  

Looking over the documents, her gaze was drawn to a string of letters and numbers that made her fur stand on end.  “Do you remember returning Sans to his … “  'Owner’, the page said, like he was some unwanted pet to be thoughtlessly handed off to anyone willing to claim it instead of a thinking, feeling child.  “To a man from Hotland?”

“No, I … “  Dogamy fell silent.  Confusion and horror flickered through his eyes, and she knew he had remembered something he wished could stay forgotten.  “I did … I gave him up.  To someone I knew he was afraid of.  I … why would I do that?”

Dogaressa pulled her whimpering partner to her side.  She could feel guilt and anguish churning in his soul, the ripples of it stirring his magic and echoing through the bond they shared.  She held him close for a moment, running her short, blunt claws through his fur.  “You surrendered him to the royal scientist.  Anyone would have done the same thing.”

“That can’t be it.  There is no royal scientist, not anymore, everyone knows that.  No one’s held that title since … “  He trailed off again, confusion disrupting the ocean of guilt he’d been so close to drowning in.  

Unfortunately, Dogaressa had been expecting that response.  Her own memory told her much the same thing, that the prestigious position had been empty for so long that people didn’t really think much about it any longer.  However, the records she’d uncovered told an entirely different story.  It didn’t seem possible.  “Who was the last royal scientist?”

“The one who made the Core,” Dogamy answered automatically, pulling back to give his mate an incredulous look.  

“Yes, but do you remember their name?  What they looked like?  Anything?”

She waited patiently as he thought, starting to speak once or twice but choosing not to.  Eventually he shook his head, his expression troubled.  “No.”

“Neither do I,” Dogaressa admitted, letting her mask of composure slip.  Her partner knew her well enough to see through it anyway.  “Don’t you think that’s strange?  If they were so important, shouldn’t at least one of us remember something about them?  Shouldn’t there still be a royal scientist even if it’s not the same person who made the Core?  And look here.”  She snatched up one of the last pages she’d managed to uncover, one placed near the end of her makeshift timeline, and pressed it into her mate’s hands.  It was written in his distinctive scrawl, signed, dated, and stamped with his pawprint.  There was no mistaking it, Dogamy himself had written the report, but the look on his face as he skimmed those words made it clear that he did not remember writing them.

The paper shook in his hands as he began to read aloud.  “By order of the royal scientist, we have surrendered the creature,” his voice wavered, choked with guilt, “known as  WD.G – E2 – 001 – S to … I can’t make this out.”

“All the reports are like that.  I can’t explain it.”  Dogaressa didn’t have to look to know what he was referring to.  Where there should have been a name, there was only a blurred, indecipherable mess.  Though she would often jokingly tease Dogamy about his penmanship, she knew he couldn’t be to blame for it.  Something about the distorted smudge, what should have been letters breaking apart at the edges before fading into nothingness, just wasn’t right.  Her gaze slid away from it all too easily, unwilling or unable to try and decipher it any further.  Forcing herself to stare at it made her head ache.    
As worrying as that was, somehow it was the fact that none of them could remember the person who had walked into their base and taken one of the children away that concerned her more.  “Can you tell me what the person who took Sans looked like?”

“He was … he … “  Dogamy let out a frustrated whine, shaking his head as if to clear it.  “I know I should remember, but I just can’t.  Something must be wrong with me.”

“I think something might be wrong with all of us,” Dogaressa said softly, worry pitching her words into something grim.  “Is there anything you do remember?”

She let him think, hoping he might manage to drag something back from the fog that had eclipsed his memory as well as her own.  Even a small detail might spark something more.  At the very least, it would help her feel like this person was truly real and not just a figment of their imaginations.  

“He was confident,” Dogamy said at last.  “Intimidating.  He used commands and Sans just … obeyed.”  Regret once more wound its way through his magic.  “I know Sans was afraid of him.”  

An intimidating man who demanded obedience and had claimed not just to be in charge of the boys but to own them.  That wasn’t much to go on, but it did make her remember something she’d heard not so long ago.  Something which held more than unpleasant implications.  “Grillby said that someone, I’m guessing the mysterious doctor he talked about, _made_ the pups.”

Dogamy stared at her, eyes wide with shock and horror.  “That can’t be right.  You don’t just … _make_ monsters the way you’d build a television.  They’re _people_.”

“I know, but why else would anyone carve what looks like identification numbers into a child’s bones?”    
There were no photos in their records, a fact which Dogaressa was silently grateful for, but she didn’t need a picture to remember those awful marks.  Tiny numbers below a series of carefully spaced lines and larger sequence of letters and numbers, all cut deep and stained black against pale white bone.  It had looked like something that might belong on a product or invention, not a living thing.  She’d called a few friends in the New Home royal guard and had them ask around, but no one connected to the Core facility or the Hotland labs had recognized the markings they’d discovered on the children.  They did find something similar to the start of the sequence in records that no one remembered making, but it was just one small part of a series of files so heavily corrupted that they looked like gibberish.  It could have easily been coincidence, but Dogaressa didn’t think so.  “Have you ever met another monster that could shapeshift the way they do?  Not just change shape but shift into a completely different form?  Have you ever even heard of that?”

“Well … no, but … “

“And especially a shapeshifting skeleton.  You know how rare they are to begin with.”  Aside from the pups, there weren’t any other skeletons in Snowdin, and it had been that way ever since Dogaressa herself was a puppy.  She’d never heard of any living in waterfall either.  There were a few skeleton monsters in New Home, at least she was fairly certain there were, but she couldn’t recall actually meeting any.  That alone made Sans and Papyrus a bit extraordinary, but their powerful magic and previously unheard of transformation abilities took it from ‘extraordinary’ to 'suspicious’.  “If what Grillby said is true and they were made rather than born, then I think someone designed those two to be an entirely new kind of monster.”  

“That’s just not possible,” Dogamy muttered.  “Is it?”  

She couldn’t blame him for not believing her claims.  It sounded ridiculous even to her.  Impossible, perhaps, had she not seen the children change from bipedal skeletons to almost dragon-like quadrupeds with her own eyes.  “It certainly sounds like something that only a royal scientist could do.”

“But why?  Even if their magic is powerful,” a fact which neither of them could deny, “they’re just kids.”

“They won’t stay kids forever.  Those pups will grow up and when they do, they’re going to be very strong.”  And, though she hated to admit it even to herself, if they hadn’t been removed from their creator’s so called care they would have likely remained loyal to him.  Dogaressa could think of very few reasons why someone might need the unflinching obedience of monsters as powerful and uniquely capable as those two would some day be, and none of them were good.  

“They were trained.  It’s obvious,” she said, waving one of the reports in the air.  “Behavior that alternates between aggression and submission.  Conditioned responses to key words and phrases.  Collars.  This even says that the man who came to get Sans took him away on a lead.  Someone was training them to fight and to answer to commands like they were animals.”  It was no wonder that Dogaressa and her fellow guardsmen had mistaken Sans for nothing more than a magic infused creature when he’d shown up behind Grillby’s bar.  He hadn’t known how to act like a real monster because he’d never been treated like one.  Anger made her magic spike, but she forced it down.  There was no point to it now.  It didn’t matter what she could or couldn’t prove if no one remembered that the man behind those actions had ever even existed.  

At the end of the day they were left with two problems; a royal scientist who the world seemed to have forgotten about that might very well have created a new breed of monster for less than peaceful purposes and an unknown shadowy entity which appeared to defy the laws of both magic and nature.  Was it possible that the man neither of them could remember also had something to do with the creeping black ooze that had appeared and disappeared without a trace?  Could he be behind the sickening scent that Dogaressa could only describe as magic slowly rotting?  She wished she could pretend that the two were not connected, but Grillby’s suspicions and her own instincts told her otherwise.  

“I should go back,” Dogamy said, eyeing the door anxiously.  “I don’t like leaving them alone so long.”

“I’ll go.  You stay and get some rest, you can take over for me in the morning.”

Dogaressa gathered the reports into a pile and ushered her exhausted partner to bed.  Though the thought of staying with him and attempting to get her first full night’s rest in days was a tempting one, she knew she couldn’t.  Neither of them would rest easy until this mystery had been solved.  She drank the rest of her now cold coffee and poured what was left in the pot into a thermos.  Pulling the hood of her thick, dark cloak over her head, she retrieved her own trusty battle ax and headed out onto the cold streets of Snowdin.  She had a feeling this was going to be another long night.  

—-

W. D. Gaster, or what was left of him at least, shambled around his home like an aimless ghost.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt hunger or thirst.  Though he was always weary, he was never truly tired, or at least not tired enough to sleep.  He’d tried, once or twice, but the static in his head would rise and roar until any hope of sleeping was abandoned in favor of mindless pacing through the darkened halls.  He’d always seen better in dimmer light.  Now he hardly needed the light at all.  Those few times he did manage to bump into some piece of furniture didn’t matter.  He couldn’t feel it anyway.  A maddening numbness plagued him, draining all sensation away from his body and mind, leaving only the pain steadily building in his core.

It was hard to look at himself in the mirror.  The image reflected back at him seemed to blur and warp as he stared, his features sliding into something grotesque and nightmarish until he blinked and the face looking back at him momentarily righted itself.  Sometimes he swore he saw his reflection smiling at him in a way that made his fractured soul seize with fear.  He wished he had a photo somewhere, just to see if it too would appear distorted, but the only pictures of him that existed belonged to the royal family.  Gaster himself had never been one for sentimental keepsakes, unlike Asgore who kept every letter and photo that came his way, and hadn’t seen a reason to waste valuable film on something so frivolous.  Now he regretted his almost flippant dismissal of such sentimental notions.  

Evidence of his influence was all around him, he had lived and breathed only his work for too many years to count, but evidence of the man behind the theories was oddly lacking.  Some of that he had to chalk up to his own impersonal nature, but even he had saved some things which tied him to this place.  The journal he kept by his bedside for those times when inspiration struck in the middle of the night?  The words had transformed themselves into a jumbled mess.  The official document Asgore had insisted on presenting him with when he’d been granted the title of Official Royal Scientist?  Though the document itself was intact, every mention of his name was blurred into meaninglessness.  And it wasn’t that someone had been through his home while he’d been away, which would have been unlikely to begin with, he saw it happening all around him.  When he tried to write, hoping to record his thoughts and observations in order to see things clearly at last, the words seemed to jump and skitter on the page.  His own name blurred into indecipherable scrawlings the moment he’d written it, no matter how he chose to do so.  Things didn’t distort quite so much when he wrote in Hands, which had always come easier to him than Standard, but even that could not spare his name from whatever force scattered the records he tried to keep.  

Gaster tried his best to stay calm and focused, but sorting through the tangle of half formed thoughts that skittered through his mind wasn’t easy even without reality rewriting itself around him.  He strayed far too easily, his consciousness drifting to dark and obscure places he’d never dreamed of before.  Sometimes he thought he recognized a voice that wasn’t his, an idea that hadn’t come from him yet was firmly planted in his mind, but those instances were becoming rare as this other voice blended too easily with his own.  What did it matter anyway if they wanted the same things?  They did want the same things … didn’t they?

The doctor tried to throw himself into his work to escape the harsh twisting that had become his reality.  He always did better with a task to pour his energy into.  Gaster moved from project to project, scribbling down theories about the nature of void energy when mixed with magical matter or penning new blueprints which were all too often rendered useless by the unseen hands which scattered his words, but the one that kept his attention best was the thing that dominated his thoughts more than anything else; the missing pieces of his soul.  He ached from the constant ebb and flow of energy trying to reach into those fragments, the pain growing steadily until it had become an all consuming agony.  Did his creations feel that pain as well?  Did an echo of his anguish reach them?  He didn’t think so.  They might have obeyed properly if it had.  He sensed the presence of their magic in Snowdin, the bond that linked the distant pieces of himself stretching all the way to the other end of the underground.  Whoever had possession of them had not let the pair go just yet.  Gaster wondered if whoever it was might be looking for him.  He wondered what their intentions might be if they found him.  

He called to his creations the only way he could, sending powerful jolts of magic through the collar one of the pair still wore.  It had been tricky to trigger at first, distance and the altered state of his own natural magic making his connection to the crafted spells shaky, but with a bit of practice he’d learned to master them once again.  Now he activated those spells when his pain became too great to ignore, knowing that the blue and yellow magic he’d woven through that leather band would the attention of his creations better than anything else.  He didn’t let the punishment go on too long, and never to the point of physical harm, but it was long enough for his message to get across; what you are doing is wrong, stop and return to me or this will continue.  

The dark presence of the void answered his call far better than his creations did.  Its’ energy coiled in him, not quite anti-magic, not anymore, but certainly not magic as he knew it.  It whispered sweet promises of eternal, quiet peace.  Or perhaps that wasn’t the void at all.  He tried not to listen.  Instead he focused on the black energy, how it twisted and twined through his own magic.  If he focused, he could bend that power to his will and open tears in reality itself, stepping through without having to linger in the void.  It was difficult and draining, but definitely preferable to spending too much time in that endless emptiness.  Each time he dared set foot in the void, coming back to reality became harder.  The desire to leave it, to exist in the real world at all, became muted by that endless quiet.  

Gaster’s soul pulsed with pain, an intangible force pulling him towards its’ far away fragments even as something else pulled the rest of him in a different direction.  He gripped at his chest, the once sturdy bones of his fingers squishing and distorting under the pressure.  He carefully loosened his grip, wishing he could be surprised by the grotesque, unnatural bend in his digits.  The slow, sliding melt had begun fairly recently.  At first it was just an odd droop to his eye sockets and mouth, but it had quickly spread from there and showed no signs of stopping.  He couldn’t recall if it were hours, days, or mere moments since he’d first discovered it, but it was getting worse.   He feared that soon the horrific display which leered at him from the mirror would become reality.  And the worst part of it was, he couldn’t understand why.  Was this being caused by the void matter that had bonded with his own magic, or did it have something to do with the anomaly he’d felt from his missing soul fragments?  Were his creations destabilizing too?  Would it stop if he managed to fix his soul?  Could anything undo this?

Gaster wrapped himself in the thick material of his coat, hoping to hold the melting, drooping pieces of himself together.  

One way or another, this had to end.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh gosh I am SO sorry it's been so long. I've been posting chapters on tumblr but things got kind of crazy and I forgot to post here. D: Umm, at least I can offer art? Y-ya, I draw sometimes for this fic, so if you're interested in this chapter's image you can see it [here](http://ashadowcalledkei.tumblr.com/post/151950428346/told-you-this-next-chapter-would-be-done-quicker).

Papyrus woke with a start.  He shook his head as if to chase away the lingering feeling of unease that clung to him.  The boy rarely remembered what happened in his dreams, except when they weren’t really dreams at all.  Those times, he remembered everything and wished he hadn’t.

The large room he’d fallen asleep in was quiet and still.  The little skeleton settled back down on the soft couch that had been his bed.  It was still pleasantly warm.  He wondered how long he’d been asleep.  The lights were on, but that didn’t mean very much.  The lights were always on now.  It had been many days since that awful night which haunted him, yet the memory of it remained fresh and raw.  Even though there hadn’t been sight nor smell of the moving shadow since then, Papyrus found himself nervously searching the room for any hint of unexplainable darkness.  He wasn’t the only one still affected by the chillingly familiar specter either.  Grillby had barely left them alone ever since.  That might have been upsetting before, back when Papyrus wasn’t sure if he should trust this person who’d taken him in for no apparent reason, but now the fire monster’s presence was a comfort.  

Over the last few days, Dogaressa and Dogamy had always been close by as well.  They had come and gone and come again, arriving seemingly without warning and always with a nervous, frightened air that they could not quite mask.  Often one would stay and the other would go, though they did not say why.  At least, not to Papyrus.  He would hear them whispering to one another sometimes, or speaking to Grillby in hushed, worried tones.  At first he’d feared that he’d done something wrong or, worse yet, that the fire monster had grown tired of him and his brother and wanted to send them away.  He’d braced himself for punishment, as he had done so many times, but somehow it never came.  

A faint sound caught his attention.  Papyrus looked down at his smaller sibling who was curled up next to him on the couch.  Sans was still deeply asleep, his expression tense and twitching.  He let out tiny whimpers and huffs of air so quiet that even Papyrus had to strain to hear them.  He knew the other boy was still trapped in the dreams they both shared.  When they slept, sometimes they saw through the eyes of the man Papyrus wished he could forget.  Something awful hid there now.  Something that had looked back at him.  The young skeleton shuddered, wishing he could rid himself of the feeling of unknown otherness reaching for him. He prodded his brother’s shoulder and leaned down to nuzzle him, keening softly until he stirred.  

Small hands batted at him, halfheartedly pushing him away.  'sleepy,’ Sans whimpered.

‘Lonely,’ Papyrus whined in return.

Round eye sockets blinked open, staring up at him with a warm, familiar glow.  After a moment, that gentle smile he knew so well turned mischievous and before Papyrus knew what was happening he found himself face down on the couch cushions.  A bony knee momentarily dug into his ribs as his brother curled up on top of his back.

'not lonely now,’ Sans trilled, sounding all too pleased with himself.

Letting out a mock growl, Papyrus wriggled in protest.  One quick roll sent the smaller skeleton tumbling off his back and into the cushions.  He was careful to make sure that Sans didn’t fall towards the hard floor.  He was always careful with his brother.  

Sans flopped against the plush surface, hands pressed over his face to further muffle the breathy sound of his quiet laughter.  He didn’t have to, not in this place, but it was a habit he’d yet to let go of.  Papyrus laughed too, simply because he could.  It was still so new, so different, to not have to hide that joyous sound.  For a moment, he could almost believe that everything was good and they were sleeping on the couch because they wanted to.  But they weren’t.  

With obvious reluctance, Sans pushed himself upright.  He arched his spin in a long, languid stretch, reaching up with both arms to work out the kinks that sleeping curled up so often caused, then let all that tension go with a quick, rattling shake.  He scratched idly at his bandaged neck, accidentally making his collar turn.  A shadow of something undefinable passed through his eyes so quickly that anyone else would have missed it entirely.  Papyrus noticed.  He always did.  

The collar haunted them, a constant reminder of what they truly were, but they’d both done their best to ignore it before.  It didn’t matter, that’s what Grillby had said, and it would come off when they were stronger.  When he found a safe way.  A way that didn’t hurt.  That way didn’t exist, the brothers knew that much, but they’d agreed anyway because they wanted to believe that it was true.  And for a while, that had been enough.  It hadn’t mattered because they hadn’t _let_ it matter.  What they were wasn’t important when what they could be meant so much more.  Then they’d woken up to find a living shadow of their past reaching out for them, tainting what should have been safe, and now it mattered more than ever.

Their master was calling them, but the little skeletons refused to answer.  Grillby and the dogs said they were people, not weapons.  They said that the tall man did not own them anymore and they never had to return to his side ever again.  Papyrus wanted to believe that he was more than just E2 – 002 – P, but each time he thought that perhaps they might be free, his brother’s collar would activate.  Blue and yellow magic would seize them both as he rushed to help ground his sibling and the happy dream he’d built would come crashing down.  

Papyrus did not hate easily.  When that particular emotion did strike him, as it came to all thinking, feeling creatures, it burnt itself out quickly leaving behind bitter guilt and regret.  Hate had only ever hurt him, and so he did not see much of a place for it in his life, but the thick, black band that trapped his brother, that thing he hated.  He wanted it gone, they all did, but this one didn’t cut the way his own collar had.  The sharp blades that had torn his band in half could not do the same to this new, stronger substance, though their attempts had left many lines and notches along its surface.  Grillby had even tried to burn it away, though he’d stopped when Sans’s bones began to scorch.  Though his brother hadn’t complained, Papyrus knew that it had hurt him and neither of them were eager to try again.  But what else could they do?  

The young skeleton slid off the couch, landing soundlessly on the hard wood floor.  He was hungry and thought that Sans might be too.  Besides, food was a good distraction, especially the food that Grillby gave them.  He’d never dreamed that there could be so many different tastes in the world.  Maybe, if they were good, they could get more of that sweet, crunchy stuff.  A hint of smoke and the unique scent that he only knew as 'burning’ guided him to where Grillby sat dozing in a comfortable looking chair on the other side of the room.  The way his head rested against his shouldn’t didn’t seem quite as comfortable, but it must not have bothered him too much since he was still asleep.  The noisy box that monsters called 'the radio’ sat on a small table nearby, still emitting the faint sounds of unknown voices.  It had been louder before, when the fire monster had turned it on and it had played soft music that, to Papyrus at least, sounded almost like magic felt.  He’d liked the music thing.  

'Quiet,’ he silently said to his brother with a simple gesture, his hands clumsily moving through the motions he’d learned by watching their creator.  'He sleeping.’

Sans nodded and gestured back in agreement.  Neither of them wanted to wake the fire monster.  They’d done it before, always by accident, and somehow hadn’t been punished for it then, but that still wasn’t a risk either of them were willing to take just yet.  

Since Grillby wasn’t up, Papyrus decided to go to the food place on his own.  That too was a risk, but he hadn’t been punished for going there yet and hoped that, so long as he didn’t knock anything over this time, it would be okay now as well.  He crept through the house in wary silence, ever watchful for any dark shadows lurking in places they should not be.  A lifetime of training made it easy for him to move quickly and quietly no matter which shape he wore, so getting to his destination without disturbing the peace and quiet that had settled over the little home was easy.  Grillby said this place was called the kitchen, though Papyrus didn’t understand why.  It was a funny sounding kind of word.  The room itself though, he liked that very much.  It was warm and open and it always smelled like good, tasty things.  He sniffed about for something that they could eat, but all the scents he found there were old and the only things he saw that he knew had food in them were on counters too high up for him to reach.  He momentarily debated climbing up there to retrieve one of the brightly colored boxes but quickly dismissed the idea.  If he fell or knocked something over or took something he wasn’t meant to have, then the fire monster might be angry with him.  Better to go without than take that sort of risk.  

As he left the room, he passed by the cozy pillow pile that Grillby had placed under the table for him and Sans.  Papyrus missed curling up there, enjoying the warmth of this room and its wonderful smells, watching the fire monster cook.  He missed their comfy nest in the bed-room-place too, softer and more inviting than anything he’d ever known.  He longed for the peace and safety they had found here, where smiles came easy and didn’t have to hide all those awful, painful things that he saw anyway but pretended not to.  It had been like a dream once, impossible yet somehow real, but their master had taken that dream away.

He padded his way back into the big room, slipping silently past the sleeping fire monster, to find Sans gnawing at the marks on his arm.  Papyrus wasn’t surprised.  Both of them had taken to scratching and chewing at the numbers that marked them.  It was an old habit, one they’d not been permitted to indulge in much back in the labs.  Back then, if they wore the carefully carved lines down too much, they would have to be cut deeper.  Papyrus had only ever been through that once, and the experience was more than enough to teach him not to chew too hard.  Now though, the only punishment they’d received for wearing away at their own bones was a sad look that made the younger boy’s soul twist with guilt.  It upset Grillby when they clawed and chewed at their limbs, and neither of them liked upsetting the monster who had been so kind to them.  So they only chewed like that when he wasn’t around to see it and, up until recently, hadn’t left many visible marks behind as evidence.  Ever since that awful night though, it had been getting harder and harder to stop lashing out at the numbers that branded them as property.  

Sans was half shifted, mostly bipedal but sporting the flexible spine and joints that his other shape provided.  His short muzzle, studded with deceptively small, sharp teeth, was clamped tight around his arm.  Where as Papyrus could and often did chew at his brand regardless of which shape he was in at the time, his brother did not have that luxury.  His biped teeth didn’t work quite right anymore, not since the failed experiment that had nearly taken him what felt like a lifetime ago, and he couldn’t open his mouth wide enough in that form.  Papyrus had never understood why the tall man hadn’t fixed him.

He knew Sans felt guilty for the pain his collar caused them all.  Knew it in a way beyond words.  It was in the subtle flicker of his eyes, the slow, sluggish feel of his magic, and the way his soft voice sounded ever so slightly strained even when nothing was obviously wrong.  When his thoughts strayed, he would pluck and tug at the band with trembling, damaged fingers, teeth grit and grinding together.  Even now, his long tail was wrapped tight around his body, twitching with built up tension, and he’d hooked a finger around that thick, black collar.  Sans had nearly killed himself to be free of his last band.  Papyrus didn’t want to think of what his brother might do if this went on much longer.  

The younger boy rubbed at his own arm, not quite in the mood to chew at it but irritated none the less.  The fabric of his sleeve caught on the edges of the larger cuts, dragging awkwardly and making them itch even more than they already had.  He was used to it, but that didn’t mean he liked it.  Even his old mark, the one across his scapula that he remembered from back when he was small and helpless, would bother him sometimes.  It had become shallow and faint as he grew, to the point that both it and the matching mark on Sans could hardly be seen, but there were days when it would still agitate him like an itch he could not scratch.  

Papyrus crawled back onto the couch, letting himself sink into its soft warmth.  He leaned his shoulder against his brother’s.  After a moment, the faint sounds of teeth scraping against bone stopped.  The younger boy glanced at Sans out of the corner of his eye socket, watching as the sharper features he’d taken on gradually changed into something rounded and soft.  Papyrus smiled at that.  Sharp or soft didn’t matter much to him, Sans was still Sans no matter what he looked like, but he was glad to see some of that nervous tension go away.  At least for a little while.  

Their peaceful moment shattered when the felt the collar activate once more.  The small figure at his side went suddenly rigid, rattling faintly and biting back a choked cry.  Sans pulled away quickly, but not before a tiny yellow spark jumped between them to bite at the younger skeleton’s bones.  Papyrus instantly wrapped both arms around his brother and drew him close.  Electric yellow raced through him, making his magic buzz in a way that was anything but pleasant.  Heavy blue dragged at his soul.  The air was alive with sharp, sparking energy.  Papyrus wanted to run from that awful feeling, to escape and free himself from the terrible, painful magic.  Then he saw how the lights had gone out in his sibling’s eyes.  He held on tighter.  

The pair let out pained yelps as power surged between them.  The plush surface they were huddled on suddenly dipped as new weight came to rest against it.  With only a soft crackling sound as a warning, Papyrus found himself surrounded by a warm embrace.  The crackle of embers turned harsh, spitting faint sparks as the spells that raced through the little skeletons arced their way towards Grillby as well.  Papyrus didn’t know why the man helped them when it was clear that the magic dragging at them hurt him too.  He only knew how that touch made it easier as the fire monster pulled some of that stinging, smothering power away from them.  

'Bad,’ he couldn’t help but think as a wave of deep, dark blue clawed at his soul, 'been bad.  Should stop.  Stop and listen and do what Doctor says.  Be good, and it will stop.  Be good.  Be good.’  But the doctor wasn’t here.  He couldn’t be here.  This was Grillby’s home, and the monster protected it.  As long as they were here, the tall man could not reach them.  The collar’s magic pulled at him, as powerful and insistent as any command, but the boy shut his eyes tight and tried to block it out.  They didn’t belong to Doctor anymore.  They didn’t have to listen.  It would stop soon … it should stop … why wasn’t it stopping?  A stab of panic cut through the pain as that warm, grounding touch left him.  Papyrus let out a fearful whimper.  

“Stay with him,” Grillby said as that warmth returned for a moment, petting his skull and guiding him to look up.  The fire monster looked scared and pained but he was smiling in a way that was almost reassuring.  “I’ll be right back.”

Papyrus nodded and held the shaking form of his brother close.  The pair rode out waves of relentless energy as best they could, but it was slowly getting the better of them.  Sans had both hands at his throat, yanking violently at the collar that refused to end their torment.  Pulses of yellow and blue tore warped cries from him, not quite 'monster’ but not 'animal’ either, and Papyrus couldn’t help but echo them.  It had never gone on this long before.  What if it never stopped?  

Warm fingers pried his own away, forcing his hands to open and release the death grip he had on his sibling.  Papyrus flailed as he was pulled away and placed on the floor.  No!  He would not be separated from his brother again.  Sans needed him!

“It’s alright.  Everything’s going to be okay.”  

The world swam back into focus as the yellow magic’s influence on Papyrus slowly faded.  The little skeleton blinked up at the hazy image of Grillby taking his place on the couch.  Sans tried to pull away at first, much like he had, but thought better of it as unexpected contact channeled some of that awful magic away from him.  He whimpered and curled up in the man’s lap, making himself as small as possible.  

“Papyrus,” the fire monster said, though his words were strained and hard to understand, “you need to stay back for now.  If this goes wrong, I don’t want you to get hurt.  Please, you have to trust me.”

There was something gripped tight in his hand.  Something familiar.  The short, sharp scissors that had once freed the younger boy smoked faintly as fire magic was channeled into them.  Their metal blades glowed, heat turning the normal silver sheen into a white hot beacon.  Heat plus metal.  Hurt plus hurt.  Papyrus backed away from the sight, wanting nothing more than to grab Sans and take them both far away.  Grillby had tried this once before only for the scissors’ black handles to melt off, dripping little puddles of something hot and foul smelling onto the floor.  Now, strips of some thick, rubbery material had taken their place, but those too were already beginning to show signs of melting.  The fire monster gripped the blades tightly anyway.  

Papyrus whimpered from his place on the floor, anxiously raking his fingers over the lines and curves that marked his arm.  Every instinct he had was screaming that this was dangerous.  He shouldn’t let it happen … but what other choice did they have?  Their master’s punishment was unending.  If Grillby really could stop it somehow, that was a risk worth taking.  It had to be.  The fire monster held Sans still, one arm wrapped tight around him, hand pressing his skull up and back until it dug into the man’s shoulder.  Although Papyrus knew it was the safest position for him to be in, he still hated to see his brother held immobile, throat exposed as if waiting for something to come along and break it.  He whined helplessly.  

'it’s okay,’ Sans barked at him, forcing out the sound through clenched teeth, 'i’m okay.  stay back.’

Grillby carefully pulled the collar away from the little skeleton’s neck, stretching the thick material as far as it would go.  A gleaming scissor blade was slowly slipped beneath it.  Sans hissed faintly, clearly frightened by the glowing hot metal, and Grillby once more pressed the boy’s skull against his shoulder.  He whispered something that Papyrus could not quite make out, but his tone was soothing.  The fire monster held his breath, hands trembling slightly under the force of relentless magic, and squeezed the glowing blades together.

Yellow magic flared, a web of light flashing between them as both Sans and Grillby jerked violently under the assault.  White hot metal brushed against the small skeleton’s neck, searing a long, black burn mark into the wrappings that did little to protect him.  The strangled yowl of pain his sibling failed to silence cut through the younger boy’s soul.  Papyrus backed slowly away from the sight.  He wanted to get between them and push the monster away from his brother.  He wanted to use his claws and teeth to tear that awful collar apart so that it couldn’t hurt any of them anymore.  He wanted to run and hide and pretend that none of this was happening.  He just needed to do something, anything, to make this end, but fear and indecision kept him frozen.  He edged backwards, gaze fixed on the frightening display.

Papyrus gasped as he stepped in something slick and cold.  

The boy darted away, shaking his foot to rid it of the unknown substance.  Fat drops of thick, black liquid splattered onto the floor.  His terrified gaze was drawn to a pitch black puddle which grew before his eyes, spreading quickly towards him.  It followed him each time he tried to get away, inky darkness rapidly pooling around his feet.  Tendrils of blackness, icy cold and far too solid, reached up to wrap around his ankles.  The child let out a high pitched yelp as he struggled against its grasp, reaching down to tear and claw at the substance.  Chunks of living shadow tore free of the mass, each one melting almost instantly in his hands until it ran through the gaps in his bony palms like water.  

Darkness surged up, racing across him, binding his limbs until he toppled to the floor.  Papyrus tried to scream, but a thick band of shadow wrapped around his skull and held his mouth shut.  The black pool bubbled and churned, large splattering globs of some unknown substance falling away from a pale hand which rose up from its impossible depths.  Papyrus struggled, writhing on the ground as he fought the force which held him far too tightly, but the shifting bonds would not relent.  The hand came down, slapping onto the stained wood floor.  Dark liquid spilled from a neat, even hole punched through its palm.  

Another arm.  The curve of a skull.  Hunched, shaking shoulders.  Shadows fell away from the emerging figure like liquid night, rolling off a bleached white face marred with long, painful looking cracks.  Empty eyes turned towards the little skeleton.  A black slash of a mouth tilted slowly into a hollow grin.  Papyrus screamed.  The sound was muffled into obscurity by the darkness that held him, its cold slickness wrapping around his mouth, but he didn’t notice.  All his attention was on the warped, twisted face of his master as it leaned slowly towards him.  Those cracked sockets were dark and empty, but somehow he knew that they were focused intently on him.  

A soft cry echoed the boy’s own, desperate and pleading.  As he managed to tear his terrified gaze away from those darkened eyes, he saw his brother reaching for him.  Sans was struggling against the fire monster’s hold and the heavy blue magic wrapped around them both, but Grillby didn’t seem to notice.  He was focused on the blazing hot metal he held, his crackling voice lost beneath the roar of magic and Sans’s own plaintive whimpers.  He hadn’t heard Papyrus.  He didn’t see the tall man.  

The younger skeleton doubled his efforts to free himself, but the living shadow was as strong as it was flexible.  There was no way he could get away on his own, and help, despite being so very close, was not coming.  The thing that had once been the tall man let out a hissing, bubbling chuckle.  He spoke, or at least Papyrus thought he had, but the sounds he made were warped and strange.  A broken hand extended towards him and Papyrus felt a different magic take hold of his soul, not quite the heavy weight of blue he’d grown used to but something equally paralyzing.  No matter how much he wanted to, he could not fight against its influence.  The boy closed his eyes tight, tears streaking down his face.  

At that moment, heated blades cut through the final inch of leather, coming together with an audible clack.  A wave of powerful magic poured out of the broken collar.  It rocked the apartment, electrified blue washing over all of them and pulling them down.  Papyrus felt its weight pressing on him, shoving him into the puddle of slick, black liquid.  The intangible hold on his soul vanished.  The bonds wrapped too tightly around him did not.

With a high pitched cry if distress, Sans wriggled his way out of Grillby’s arms.  He tried to leap from the couch, but he stumbled and fell to the floor in a heap, limbs still twitching with the after effects of yellow magic.  He didn’t seem to notice the thick, black liquid speeding across the floor towards him.  Papyrus could do nothing but watch as his brother reached for him, hints of bright blue light glittering in his otherwise dark eye sockets as he struggled to call up what remained of his exhausted magic.  

A glowing hand reached out, snatching Sans up by his shirt and pulling him away from the creeping black ooze.  A tall, shining figure blocked the younger skeleton’s view as Grillby took his place.  Something in the fire monster changed and suddenly, where there once had been a man with the gentle glow of candle light, there now stood a raging pillar of flame.  Wooden floorboards at his feet began to smoke and char.  The very air turned hot.  The living inferno crackled and hissed, a wordless warning echoing from his jagged mouth.  He moved not with measured steps but as a true force of nature, surging towards the specter that had invaded his home.  Fire erupted from him, circling what had once been the tall man in the blink of an eye.  

The thing that was not quite Doctor recoiled from the intense blaze.  He tried to retreat but found his way blocked at every turn, the flames chasing him the same way his inky darkness had chased after the children.  Dark smoke rose up as the inferno closed in on him, black ooze hissing and boiling under the heat.  He let out a twisted, piercing shriek.  Liquid night rose up around him, hiding his pale features beneath a roiling mass of impenetrable shadow.  

Papyrus let out a choked yelp as he was pulled down, pressed flat against the floor until its surface gave beneath him.  He sank into the chilled, slick darkness.  His brother called for him, screaming as much as he was able to, but he could hardly hear it.  Even the raging roar of fire was muffled by the shadows wrapping themselves around him like a thick, smothering blanket.  

Darkness closed in over him, and everything went silent.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think most of us can agree that November has been … difficult. I wanted to write, but I wasn’t in a good, creative place, if that makes much sense. And it just didn’t seem … right … to continue my awful angsty stories when there was so much hurt everywhere. So I wrote fluff. (and if you want to read the rest of my ramble about being an angst-based writer in a world that needs fluff ... y-ya you probably don't ... you can check that out on my tumblr)
> 
> In fact, I started posting that fluff, which I've wanted to do but hadn't really been sure when would be a good time to, here for you guys. Anyone who follows this series probably already saw it, but if you didn't then the fluff oneshots are called [Paper Moons and Painted Stars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8516446/chapters/19520461). I'll try and get another oneshot posted there tomorrow (unless I forget ... again .... eep). 
> 
> And if you want to see the art for this chapter, it's also posted on my tumblr over [here](http://ashadowcalledkei.tumblr.com/post/152571235286/a-bit-of-spookiness-for-my-favorite-holiday-i). S-sorry that this chapter's a short one, hopefully the other story and the art make up for that.

Papyrus was tumbling through an endless darkness without sight, sound, or scent. His arms flailed as he searched for something to grab onto. There was nothing. He couldn’t even feel the rush of air between his fingers. He cried out, screaming wordless pleas for help. No one answered. He was falling and falling and then suddenly … he wasn’t. He hadn’t felt the stinging thump of a crash landing, there wasn’t even any ground beneath him to crash into, yet the sickening feeling of free fall no longer made his head spin. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. 

“No,” a harsh, rasping voice said, the sounds behind it oddly warped. “Not here!”

Light suddenly cut through the endless black as magic wrapped itself around the child. Papyrus found himself encased in a bubble of swirling color, blues, purples, and reds twining through one another as they danced around him. The magic’s light reflected off his pale bones and illuminated the space around him, barely holding back the dark, heavy shadows that pressed in from all directions. 

“It’s holding, thank goodness,” the broken voice said again. Papyrus shouldn’t have been able to understand the twisted, crackling sounds, but he did. It was as if the words translated themselves in his mind the moment he heard them. Or perhaps there had been no true sound to begin with and he hadn’t really ‘heard’ anything at all. A figure stared down at him. Black cloth hid their body, barely distinct from the darkness around them, but their white hands and face stood out like beacons in the dark. 

The tall man. Doctor. Papyrus shrunk back in fear, huddling against the curved edge of the bubble. This person had been a constant fixture of the small skeleton’s short existence, his and his brother’s lives dictated by the man’s every whim. He had taught them what it was to walk, to fight, and to hurt. Their creator. Their master. Papyrus never dreamed that he could see that man as anything other than controlled and powerful, but now he stood hunched and gasping, pain pulling at his features. Now there was fear in his eyes, so very like the fear that the boy had seen in his brother and felt in himself. It was wrong to feel happiness from seeing another in pain. No one had ever told him that, but Papyrus knew it just the same. It was wrong … but some part of him was glad to see the tall man like this. 

The doctor muttered darkly to himself in that odd, fractured way, wringing his broken hands together. A haze of red hung around him, barely visible even in the deep, dark nothing. It swirled and pulsed like a living thing. Papyrus knew red like this. He’d seen it shine in needles and tubes. He’d heard the buzz of its power. It should burn, should bite, should smell of sickly sweetness and raw, terrible magic. It shouldn’t look like this, polluted by some unknown darkness until it became twisted and strange. Papyrus had feared the red for as long as he could remember, but he feared this new thing even more. 

He tried to look away, not wanting to see the hypnotizing dance of that red power any longer, but when he did he noticed something else standing out against the otherwise empty dark. There, just at the edge of his vision, he could see a thread stretched between himself and his master. It was thicker and more substantial close to the tall man, tapering off into a dim strand no larger than a hair as it neared himself. Darkness snaked its way through that strand of magical light, straining to reach through it, but something stopped it before it could get very far. It drained away as the entire thing flared and dimmed like a racing pulse. The doctor winced, clutching at his chest. 

“Well … I suppose we’ll be safe here for a moment.” The tall man turned towards him again. The red turned too, rising and falling as subtle as breath. An echo of light that had once been yellow flickered through its shifting mass. It stared down at him, not with eyes but with something very much like what eyes should have been. Papyrus remembered that stare. He’d seen it in his dreams.

The boy let out a high pitched whine of distress. He pressed his hands against the magic that had become his prison. He had to get away! Away from the tall man and away from the swirling, darkened red that focused so intently on him, its gaze as weighty as any blue spell. Papyrus clawed at the bubble of magic, his fingers digging into its malleable surface. Colors swirled as the magic stretched under the assault, but it did not break. 

“Stop that,” the doctor snapped, his words blurring into a harsh crackle. “That shield is the only thing keeping you safe right now. If you run from me, I won’t be able to protect you and the void will destroy your magic.”

Papyrus shrank back, curling himself into a small ball at the back of the shining sphere. He’d never liked it when the tall man used that awful tone, and his new warped voice made those hard, hateful words so much worse. He pressed his hands close to his chest, holding them over where his soul beat frantically beneath his ribs. 'Be good,’ he thought, 'be good and still and quiet and he won’t hurt you.’ But that wasn’t always true. Sometimes punishment came no matter what. The boy curled up tighter, trying to silence the fearful rattle of his shaking bones. 

The doctor glared down at him, his split eye sockets narrowing to dark slashes. “What to do with you … “

Red and black energy coiled around him like wisps of smoke. Slowly he went still, his expression shifting and changing into something truly blank. His arms hung like led weights at his sides. 'Take your soul back,’ something called, whispering without a voice. 

“Yes,” the tall man answered, soft and distant. A moment later he shook his head, breaking the hypnotic haze he’d sunk into. “No, not yet. Can’t do it here, there’s too many variables.”

The tall man turned away from Papyrus, hands clasped behind him as he paced back and forth. His movements seemed strangely fluid compared to the stiff, measured way he’d always walked before. The captive child watched warily, eyes dark with fear as he followed not the footsteps of the man but the drifting swirl of formless red. The suggestion of eyes bored into him. Bands of shadow swirled above and below them, streaking across the red mist like breaks through bone. 

The man stopped, straightening back to his full, imposing height. His mouth slowly stretched into a hollow smile that made his captive tremble in fear. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

All his life, Papyrus had been trained as a weapon. His natural freeze response to dangerous situations had been beaten down, stamped out of him in favor of a 'more appropriate’ predisposition to swift and often violent action. Eliminate the threat before it eliminates you. And now, Papyrus saw the twisted, haunted thing that had once been his master for the threat it was. He growled, low and fierce, the sound turning deeper as his mouth stretched into a muzzle. He barely felt the twinge of his lower jaw splitting. Claws teased the surface of the bubble, pressing down with sharp little points that couldn’t quite break through. Magic sparked in his chest, flaring into a blaze of power which sang inside him. 

The man’s dark eyes narrowed in anger again. “Subject,” he started to say, ready to issue a command that his creation would have no choice but to obey, but before he could continue the air rang with the piercing resonance of magical feedback. 

Papyrus opened his mouth and a scream of blazing, burning magic shot out of him. It ripped through the bubble, tearing a gaping hole in its shimmering surface, and struck the furious specter of the tall man. The child closed his eyes tight against the sight of the man stumbling back. Dark smoke, barely visible against the eternal blackness around them, billowed from his scorched chest. The bubble shield dissolved into fading sparks and Papyrus tumbled out, rolling to try and cushion an impact that never came. There was no ground in this place. He scrambled to his feet, or at least until he felt more or less upright, and ran. His paws searched for something solid to push against and found nothing, yet the action still propelled him forward. He gasped and panted, but there was no air, only something which stung at his bones like cold fire. Angry static roared behind him. 

'What have I done?’ his racing thoughts moaned, 'he’ll be so angry. Must never make master angry, never never never.’ The urge to crawl back to the tall man and beg his forgiveness was almost impossible to ignore, yet the boy forced himself to go on. There would be no forgiveness, not after what he’d done. Master would destroy him, and he’d never see his brother or Grillby or the dogs ever again. Shimmering tears streaked down his face, tiny droplets splashing into the nothingness where they were quickly swallowed up until no trace of them remained. 

Nameless energy clawed at the boy, scraping over his bones, worming its way between his ribs. The cold left in the wake of its invisible touch was so strong that it burned. Something flared hot inside of him, struggling to fight off the biting chill of whatever it was that hid in the dark. Pappyrus pushed on despite it all, more afraid of his master’s swift punishment than the agony tearing its way through him. 

'Home,’ the frightened child thought as he ran, 'I want to go home!’ Not the place of his origins, where the tall man wanted to go, but the place he and Sans had managed to find against all odds. Papyrus longed for the peace and security that he’d known so briefly. He wanted the protection of the monsters who’d shown him such kindness. But more than anything, he needed his brother. The tall man might have been the center around which his life had turned, but his brother was the one thing he’d always been able to rely on. Even in the labs, when he’d not know that his life could be anything more than tests, trials, and punishment, Sans had shown him kindness and love. His brother was his strength, and when Sans stumbled and fell Papyrus did his best to be that strength for him as well. They needed one another. Wherever his sibling was, good or bad, that was always where he had to be. 

The thread of light he’d seen before fell away behind him, stretched so thin that it might as well have not existed at all, but now the boy could see another in its place. It glittered on the edge of his vision, this strand brighter, stronger, and warmer than the one he’d seen before. There was something familiar about it. He followed the hint of light, letting it lead him through the emptiness. He didn’t know if it would take him home, nor if such a thing was even possible, but it was all he had. 

In this space beyond sound, his soul cried out, magic roaring in a voiceless scream as it called to its match …

And something called back.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to update this like ... four days ago ... but kept forgetting. Aah, I'm sorry! I'm also really sorry I haven't been replying to any comments, I'll try and get on that soon. But, in the meantime ... there's art for this chapter again. Y-yay? You can see it on the tumblr post over [here](http://ashadowcalledkei.tumblr.com/post/153444507616/so-i-think-most-of-us-can-agree-that-november-has).

The apartment over Grillby’s bar had never been ‘loud’ per say, especially ever since the incident, but with Papyrus gone it was as if all life and color had been drained away from it and its inhabitants.  The click of claws on wooden floors and anxious crackle of flames seemed muted, and a young skeleton found himself growling under his breath if only to try and fill the empty space his sibling had left behind.  He prowled the room, circling the spot where the slick darkness had been.  There was no trace of it left now, only frantic claw marks where he’d tried in vain to rip open whatever portal had once been there.  His long tail flicked in nervous irritation as he returned to the spot and resumed pawing at the scored wood.

There was a faint, popping crackle from nearby as Grillby sighed.  “I know you’re frightened and angry, I am too, but this isn’t helping.”  

It wasn’t a command, not even a request, but the boy couldn’t help but react as if it had been.  He let out a hushed growl and sat, glaring down at the place where his shallow claw marks marred the wood.  One paw automatically rose to scratch at the place on his neck where the hot metal had touched him.  Instantly, the annoying itch blossomed into a stabbing pain.  He hissed and panted, drawing in cool air to try and sooth the stinging burn.  It didn’t do much.  Nothing did.  Once it had become clear that there was nothing they could do to bring Papyrus back, Grillby had sat him down and carefully applied a cool cream tingling with soothing green magic to his scorched bones.  The effect had worn off long ago and he hadn’t asked for more.  He wasn’t angry about the burn, not really.  Not when there was something much bigger for him to be angry about.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, including his own though the little skeleton felt like he’d contributed nothing, they’d found no hint of the living shadows that had stolen Papyrus away.  Dogaressa and Dogamy had already come and searched the room for the attacker’s scent.  Though they’d found it in the place where he’d been attacked, that sick-sweet rot was hard to miss, they caught no trail that they could follow.  It simply appeared and disappeared, as if it only existed for that one, terrible moment and then was gone.  They didn’t know who to blame or where to look, though that hadn’t stopped them from going out in search of any hint of the distinctive scent that they might be able to track.  

The boy didn’t expect them to find it.  He’d seen the man that rose up from the hidden depths of that impossible darkness.  Even warped and twisted, he’d know the face of his master anywhere.  The dogs had said that their master was gone, that he’d never be allowed near them again, but they had lied.  He turned to his brand, clamping down on the mark and raking his teeth back and forth over the even lines that cut deep into bone.  

“Sans, stop that.”

His crested skull whipped around and he snarled at the elemental, baring sharp little fangs that gleamed in the fire’s glow, anger and denial outweighing his need to passively obey.  He didn’t want to hear that name.  Without Papyrus, he didn’t feel like 'Sans’ anymore.  That was someone else.  Someone who didn’t have to fight.  Someone who could be happy.  'Sans’ was a person he’d once thought he could become, but that dream ended the moment he lost sight of his brother.  And all that was left was 1-S.  The dangerous weapon.  The feral creature.  The living nightmare that had stalked Snowdin forest.  His chest heaved, little sparks of blue flaring and dying beneath his ribs, every spare scrap of energy in him charged and ready to destroy the enemy that had dared steal his brother from him.  But there was no enemy to fight.  

Grillby did not retreat from the threatening display, though his flames did pop with veiled nervousness.  “I’m sorry,” he said, soft and sad.  “I said I would protect you both, but I couldn’t stop it.”

The boy hissed, low and dangerous, the formless storm of his anger focusing on this new potential target.  Yes, blame him.  Blame the man who’d lured them in with sweet lies of protection.  They were just empty words, and he’d believed them like a fool.  They weren’t safe here.  They weren’t safe anywhere.  And it was his fault … his … no.  It wasn’t Grillby’s fault that this had happened.  Broken promises or not, the monsters had helped them.  And even if they hadn’t, it wasn’t Grillby’s responsibility to watch over them.  Papyrus was his brother.  He was the one who was meant to keep the other boy safe.  That was his responsibility, but no matter how hard he tried he kept failing.  It was his actions, his choices, that kept driving them towards danger for so long.  And now … now …

The boy lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, neck bent into a painfully narrow arch.  His soul flared briefly, its light flickering as the magic in him stirred and stretched, reaching out to find its match.  There was a bond between him and his brother, an invisible thread of something nameless that had linked them ever since they were small.  

'He’s your packmate,’ the tall man had told him, though he hadn’t known what that was supposed to mean at the time.  'Don’t hurt your brother,’ the assistants had said as they left him alone and the lab was once more plunged into the long, dark silence they called night.  Only, it wasn’t so silent anymore.  Now, another living thing had been left with him.  This was the thing that had been stealing the tall man’s attention away, it had to be, though he didn’t know quite what to make of that.  'Brother’, they’d called it.  He’d heard that word before.  Monsters had brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.  Those were good things, good people things, not meant for something like him.  But now, he had one of those good things too.  If only he’d known what to do with it.

This was something he wasn’t told to hunt or kill.  Something small and helpless.  That was new.    
Then the tiny new thing had cried, and he’d understood the sound.  He cried too sometimes.  It was a bad, hurting sound that made the monsters unhappy.  Not knowing what else to do, the boy had gathered the tiny creature into his arms, the way he’d seen the tall man holding them when he’d brought them to his cell, and watched in amazement as the little one calmed and snuggled up against him.  

He’d felt something in the little thing, the 'brother’ thing, that he recognized.  Something that until then he’d only ever known as 'me’.  But suddenly there was more than 'me’.  There was 'us’.  They were two of a kind, matched and mirrored, different but the same.  He wasn’t alone anymore.  He had given something of himself to his new sibling that day, and in doing so created a bond between them.  Time had made that bond grow strong, years of love and care shaping it into a connection that sang through both their souls.  Some instinctive part of him knew that, if his brother were truly gone, that link would have died along with him.  He would feel the loss of it, of him, and it would rip him apart until nothing remained but shattered pieces.  Papyrus had to be alive out there somewhere, so far beyond his reach that there was nothing he could do.  

He wasn’t sure when he’d started whining, but the sound had built to a broken hearted howl which caught in his shuddering chest.  He felt heat from close by, a radiant warmth that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and opened his eye sockets to see Grillby kneeling in front of him.  The fire monster moved as if to touch him but stopped short.  His hand hung suspended in the air for a moment then fell back into his lap.  There were traces of something ashy on his face.  

“Sans, please.  Come back to me.”

The boy shook, not able to bring himself to meet the fire monster’s gaze.  He recognized a sadness in those eyes so very much like his own.  Why?  Why did this man care for him and his brother so much?  And why was he not being punished for his actions?  The tall man never let him lash out or fight back.  Any display of aggression was always met with swift punishment.  So then, why was this man, who should have been angry with him or at the very least afraid, reaching out to him instead?  Why did he still offer warmth and comfort even when the boy had been so quick to reject him?  Why would a person he’d snarled at, growled at, even bitten in the past, continue to offer forgiveness without demanding anything in return?  He just didn’t understand.  

The boy stepped into that welcoming warmth, joints popping faintly as he let go of the sharp, sturdy form that had once been his only protection.  He buried his face into the man’s shirt, small hands reaching up to hold tightly to him.  Strong arms wrapped around his shaking frame.  Sans let himself sink into that gentle heat, surrendering to the soft, crackling hiss that sought to silence the storm in his mind.  Tears spilled from his eye sockets, angry and bitter and lost.  A soft touch trailed soothing warmth along his spine.  “We’ll find him,” Grillby whispered, cheek pressed against his skull, “somehow.”

Suddenly, Sans felt something cry out without word or voice.  Something which pulled at his very soul.  He was alert in an instant, squirming his way free of his guardian’s hold to stand at attention.  His chest felt tight, magic stirring almost against his will.  He sniffed the air, hands clenched into trembling fists.  There was no living scent to be found except for the smokey heat of flame and the subtle, almost earthy smell of bone.  No new magical presence lingered in the air.  So then, what was it that he’d felt?  The sensation came again, an insistent pull from unseen hands, and his magic flared in response.  Sans felt heat building in his skull as his eye socket blazed to life, wisps of bright blue magic escaping from it each time he blinked.  

“Sans?” Grillby called to him, his worry more than apparent.  “What is it?”  

The little skeleton shook his head.  He didn’t know what it was that he felt or why his magic surged of its own accord.  Power swelled beneath his ribs.  It wasn’t the familiar, charging resonance he knew, all sharp and biting as it built into a fevered pitch, but rather something that rose and fell and rose again like a second pulse, each beat building and building until it was a roar inside of him that he could barely contain.  His eye lights blinked out, leaving only the blazing blue magic behind, and it was as if a fog had rolled across the whole world.  Everything was hazy, colors muted and lines softened.  He looked back at Grillby, expecting the man to be lost in the fog as well, but that wasn’t quite the case.  True, his body was dulled by whatever haze had taken Sans’s vision, normally warm, bright hues diluted to a flickering tan, but an aura of brilliant color surrounded him.  It danced in tones of yellow and orange, flecked with tiny sparks of something that might have almost been red.  And in his chest, surrounded by a sphere of that dazzling light, glowed the pure white shape of his soul.  

Sans staggered back, nearly blinded by the display.  He looked down at his own hands and saw that they too were wreathed in color.  Not oranges and yellows, but shifting shades of blue that swirled like flowing water.  Tiny threads of yellow drifted around him, weaving a pattern through the blue light.  Through his magic, he realized.  He could see their magic.  His own soul glowed from within his chest, its light flaring and dimming with his too-quick pulse.  That strange feeling crept up on him again, pulling at him with a subtle yet persistent tug on his soul, and something else flared into view; a thread of glimmering light.  

Cautious, the boy reached out and brushed a trembling finger against the thread.  It was warm beneath his touch.  There was something soothing in it, something so like himself yet very much not 'him’.  Like a ghost of his brother’s magic.  Sans followed the thread, its light glowing brighter as his own pulse quickened.  It led him back to the spot where his claw marks marred the floor, but now he saw something else that he could have sworn hadn’t been there before.  Currents of gently billowing darkness marred the air, turning in on themselves as they spiraled in the middle of the room.  It was there but not there, like an after image trapped in his mind after he’d stared too long and hard at something.  Yet when he blinked, the apparition did not disappear.  

The thread of light that had led him there vanished into the darkness.  It did not end there, Sans could sense that much, it simply went somewhere else.  Somewhere beyond the swirling shadows.  Fearful yet hopeful, he reached out to touch the spot where that light disappeared from his sight.  Darkness swam into full view beneath his fingertips, blossoming into reality like an inky stain slowly rising above the fog until it was just as real and present as he was.  

A shocked, crackling gasp broke the silence behind him.  “What is … Sans, no!  Get away from that!”

But Sans wasn’t listening.  Before the elemental could pull him away, he reached into the swirling darkness.  It was like plunging his hand into crisp, cold water.  He could feel the subtle currents of power, not tingling with energy like magic was but somehow just as alive.  Amidst the sea of flowing shadows, a solid object brushed against his hand.  Sans nearly pulled away, but something made him stay frozen in place.  He wrapped his fingers around cold bone.

Hands grasped the boy’s shoulders, their usual warmth made almost oppressively hot by rising fear, and tried to pull him back.  Sans held on tight, reaching his other hand into the darkness to get a better grip on what he’d found.  Thin fingers latched onto his wrist.  Grillby was panicking now, his quiet voice lost in a roar of crackling flame.  He wrapped an arm around Sans to drag him away just as the boy began to tug the hidden figure free.  The not-quite-magic that flowed and pulsed in the darkness didn’t want to let go, but between the two of them they managed to wrench a third, small body free of its grasp.

Papyrus tumbled onto the floor in a shaking, rattling heap.  Sans quickly wriggled his way free of Grillby’s shock slackened grasp and was beside him in an instant, seeking to comfort his sibling.  His own fear drove him to hold the younger skeleton tight lest something else snatch him away again.  Traces of slick shadows clung to the boy.  Sans hurriedly brushed them away, but there was almost no need to.  They were already disappearing on their own.  The shadows did not so much evaporate like water or dissolve like scattered magic, they simply receded, shrinking in the light until they were gone.  

Sans held his brother close to his chest, calling to him with both gentle crooning and the silent hum of his magic.  What answered was the weak, thin song of a wounded soul.  Something in the other skeleton’s magic felt strange.  Soured.  Poisoned.  He looked down, eye socket still ablaze with power, and saw something dark twisting its way through the blue aura of magic that surrounded his sibling.  His first instinct was to run from that tainted energy.  He couldn’t let that awful wrongness touch him.  But as the younger boy shook and cried in his arms, he saw that blackened magic begin to wrap itself around his faded soul.  Sans let his own power flare once more, not the strange pressure that had altered his vision but the familiar song that linked him to his sibling.  Magic flowed between them, Shadows twisted through their bond as Sans drew some of that darkness into himself and replaced it with his own light.  

Papyrus whimpered softly, trying to push  his brother away but lacking the strength to mange more than a token shove of protest.  'Stop,’ he whined, 'no.  N-not good.  Not safe.  Can’t.’

Sans held him tighter.  He gently pressed their skulls together and trilled, the normally cheerful sound made heavy and sad.  He didn’t protest when Grillby scooped both himself and his sibling into his arms, surrounding them with heat and light.  He didn’t bother to see where the elemental took them or listen to his hurried words.  All that mattered was his little brother and the magic that flowed between them.

—-

A black portal opened into a darkened, lonely lab, and W. D. Gaster staggered back into reality.  His legs buckled beneath him, weak bones distorting into a sliding, goopy mess, and he tumbled to the floor.  He drew in a harsh, rattling gasp.  Slowly the room swam into view and the scream of static in his head settled to a dull roar.  He’d been so close.  He’d had the experiment in his grasp, safely contained by a magic barrier in the one place no one else could escape from, and somehow the creature had still slipped through his fingers.  Gaster slammed a fist down on the tile floor, his softened bones squishing like putty under the sudden impact.  This wasn’t fair.  This wasn’t right!  

The doctor struggled to push himself upright, his arms bending unnaturally.  Thin trails of black smoke billowed from charred fabric and scorched bone.  How dare that infuriating creature attack him!  And after all the trouble he’d gone to in order to protect 2-P from the power of the void.  He’d told the disobedient little thing what would happen if he ran, but he’d done it anyway.  

It had taken Gaster longer than he’d like to admit for him to regain his senses after taking a direct hit from his creation’s magical attack.  Some part of him was surprised that he’d managed to survive it at all.  Once he’d managed to collect himself, reshaping the mess of warped bone back into something resembling his real body, it had been too late.  The creature’s magical signature had vanished from the void.  At first the doctor feared that he’d been destroyed, his magic ripped to pieces by the void’s terrible power, but then he’d realized he could still sense the song of 2-P’s soul coming from a different location.  He was back in Snowdin.  It should have been impossible, but somehow his creation had escaped the void and returned to 1-S and the man who’d taken possession of them.  

He should have known better than to believe 2-P would do as he was told.  He’d spent too much time running wild with 1-S, who had always been a bad influence on the younger creature, and who could say what that mysterious fire elemental had been teaching the pair.  It was no wonder they had resisted their training and refused to return to him even when the collar’s spells punished them for it.  And now, they would all pay the price for that disobedience.  No matter how impossibly fast 2-P’s escape from the void had been, there was no way he’d been spared its more toxic effects.  It was true that he did have Determination of his own, but not nearly as much as what Gaster himself now possessed.  If that had truly been the key to his survival and subsequent mastery of the mysterious void energy, then it would not save his creation.  Whatever the anti-magic had become, it was still dangerous.  Still hungry.  It would consume the creature’s body and destroy his soul, including the donor fragment at its heart.  Unless he found some way to stop this, 2-P was going to die and a piece of Gaster would die with him.  

But he refused.  The doctor dragged himself up, reshaping proper limbs from the melted mass his body had become.  He couldn’t let his own story end because of his creation’s foolishness.  There was a way to stop this and get back what belonged to him, there had to be.  W. D. Gaster was determined to survive, no matter who or what tried to stop him.  

—-

The snow was coming down thick and fast that night.  Two hooded figures trudged down the otherwise empty street, shivering despite the heavy cloaks they wore.  Dogaressa and Dogamy were exhausted.  They’d searched every corner of town for any hint of the mysterious entity that had stolen Papyrus away but come up empty handed.  They’d only just begun combing through the forests when duty called and they’d been forced to put the hunt on hold.  The entire Snowdin guard had been called in to help clear the path to Waterfall where the sudden drop in temperature had frozen the normally tumbling falls and pools of water which always lingered in the narrow passageway.  The pair had been reluctant to give up their search for the scent of rotting magic, but there had been too much at risk for them to decline the summons.  People depended on that passageway, and it wasn’t easy to clear.  If anything went wrong, then the dangerous task of breaking down the heavy icicles which hung from the rocky ceiling like the bars of a massive cage could turn deadly.  They’d needed the strength of every guardsman to do it safely, and Dogaressa and Dogamy were two of the strongest.  

Now, with the path cleared at last, the weary duo leaned against one another as they made their way home.  They needed rest, but there was no time for that.  They would get something to eat, send another message to their contacts at the Core facility to see if they’d managed to uncover anything new about the missing former royal scientist, and call Grillby to make sure everything was, if not alright, at least unchanged.  After that, they would head out into the forest again.  Though their search felt futile, it was the only thing they could think of that might help them find the missing child.  The sickening scent was their only clue.  True they suspected something more was going on, something tied to the man none of them could remember, but without proof there was nothing they could do about it.  They could not hunt down and arrest someone that supposedly didn’t even exist.  

Dogamy’s steps faltered as they neared their house and he let out a soft cry of alarm.  A hunched figure sat on their front steps.  Despite the hooded coat wrapped tight around him, Grillby was impossible to miss.  Strips of light escaped his thick clothing, casting shifting shades of orange and yellow across the doorway.  He looked up as the dogs hurriedly approached, eyes hidden behind the fogged lenses of his glasses.  In his arms, huddled together and wrapped up tight in a thick blanket, were Sans and Papyrus.  

“Can we stay here tonight?” the elemental asked, his soft voice small and shaken.

The dogs quickly ushered them inside, shutting the door against the building blizzard.  Neither of them slept much that night.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, a new chapter! It’s time for more To Last the Night. It’s yet another cliffhanger chapter, and at this point I’m sure no one is surprised by that. I’ve got some good work done on the next part of Ash and Bone too so we’ll see if I can get that done some time soon (it would be nice now wouldn’t it). (Just as a little side note, [this](http://ashadowcalledkei.tumblr.com/post/155138194891/at-last-a-new-chapter-its-time-for-more-to) is the picture I drew when I was just starting to plan this fic. I’m so glad we finally got here.)

Dogamy watched as dawn swept across the sleepy town of Snowdin. Pale light filtered down from far away cracks in the cavern’s towering ceiling. Drifting snowflakes sparkled like gemstones in its glow. The eternal blanket of white that spread across their little corner of the underground shone brighter under the weak rays that reached them, beaming white offset by pale blue shadow. A beautiful morning, just like so many others. It seemed strange that dawn should come just as it always did when everything else in the guardsman’s life felt like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. 

Overnight, their modest home had become a shelter of sorts for the friends he and Dogaressa had been trying and failing to protect. They’d placed the little skeletons on the couch, the one spot they could think of that was both comfortable and within view from almost every corner of the house. Knowing what they did of the pair, despite the fact that much of that knowledge felt incomplete as if they’d once known the reasons why but could no longer recall that vital information, the dogs knew that, unfortunately, being observed like that might make them nervous. However, now it seemed that the terrors in their own minds overwhelmed any distress that being unable to hide would normally cause. Their wary gaze didn’t fall on the adults hovering nearby but on the darkest corners of the room. They jumped at every unexpected sound, shaking and clutching one another as if they thought the noise might have come from some invisible intruder ready and waiting to snatch them away. It was a sadly justified fear.

The children refused to be separated from one another even for a moment. They clung to each other, thin fingers woven together or hooked around collarbones, screaming like banshees the moment anyone so much as attempted to pull them apart. Every so often, their souls would flare in their chests as if they were under attack, light shining out through the gaps between their ribs and making the fabric of their shirts glow. The first time it happened, the dogs had sprung into action, alert and growling as they sought out any hint of the enemy that might be responsible. But there had been no enemy for them to fight, not then nor any of the times that followed. They’d been forced to accept that this was a different sort of battle, one that the kids would have to fight on their own.

As awful as it was to see their magic reacting as if these boys were fighting for their very lives, there was something else that frightened the adults even more. Their tiny souls were inexplicably stained. The normal white light, casting pale shades of blue when their power reflexively flared, was marred by threads of inky darkness. Each time Dogamy saw them, the stain was a bit more prominent and the surface of those souls a bit more warped. It was like the magic contained within was straining to break free, though he didn’t know why. It hurt to see the children suffer, their bright little souls pulsing and blistering, but nothing they tried seemed to bring them any relief. Whatever was wrong with them, it went far beyond the capabilities of normal healing magic. 

For their part, Dogamy and Dogaressa were handling things as best they could. Each of them tried to put on a brave face despite the helplessness they felt. They weren’t fooling each other, but they hoped that their unexpected house guests might believe they were as confident as they appeared and be able to take some measure of comfort from it. The trio deserved as much comfort as they could get. 

The soft sound of pawsteps announced Dogaressa’s return, and Dogamy’s tail wagged at the sight of her. “Well?” he asked anxiously, not quite able to silence the subtle whine that underscored his words.

“They’ll come as soon as they can,” she said, her own voice barely above a whisper. Her phone was clutched in her hand. She’d gone into the relative privacy of their bedroom to attempt yet another call to a trustworthy and discrete doctor who lived in Waterfall. They were the very same healer that the dogs had taken Sans to not so long ago, though try as he might Dogamy couldn’t remember what they had needed to rescue him from and why the experience had left him in such awful shape. He stubbornly put those thoughts out of his mind for the time being. They had far more urgent mysteries to worry about. 

“Do you think they can help?”

“I … “ Dogaressa glanced down at her phone again. It shook faintly in her too-tight grasp. “I’m not sure. Neither were they, when I tried to explain what’s happening. They’d never even heard of something like this.”

Dogamy felt as if someone were squeezing his soul. He’d known, at least on some level, that the mysterious ailment which had sunk its claws into the children wasn’t something that would be easily fixed, yet he’d still hoped that a professional healer might know what to do. “They’ll make it,” he said shakily, clinging to what hope he had left. “They’re tough little pups.”

His mate turned away, her somber gaze drawn to the pair camped on their couch. “They shouldn’t have to be.”

Everything was as it had been when Dogaress had left, and in truth nothing much had changed for the past hour. The kids were wrapped up in the same blanket that Grillby had brought them in along with some soft pillows which seemed to do little to comfort them. Sans was all but hidden beneath the pile of fabric. He twitched in his sleep, his breath coming in rapid, wheezing pants. Papyrus sat beside him, slouched against the back of the couch as if the simple act of sitting up was costing him what little energy he had left. One hand clutched the edge of the blanket and held it close to his chest like a shield. The other held tight to Sans, his brother’s smaller hand fitting neatly in his own, and Dogamy wasn’t sure how Grillby had convinced them to be even that far apart. 

Their guardian sat on the floor beside them. Grillby hadn’t been more than a few steps away from the pair since their sudden and dramatic arrival. He held a mug of thin broth in one hand, cheap and mostly tasteless stuff that had come from a can Dogamy had forgotten they’d ever bought, and a towel in the other. “Try again,” he said as he held the mug out, carefully tipping it just enough for Papyrus to sip at the warm liquid. 

The little skeleton didn’t manage more than a mouthful before he turned away, a wet, rattling cough sending a miniature flood of broth down his chin. Grillby swooped in with the towel and cleaned away the mess before anything got soaked. Behind the blanket, the boy’s shirt glowed as his soul flared in his chest. Dogamy wished he could have been surprised. The kids had flat out refused to eat, and most of their attempts to get them to at least drink something had resulted in the same heartbreaking failure. No matter how badly the pair needed a boost to their health and magic levels, they simply didn’t have it in them to process much more than tiny sips of water. 

“Grillby?” Dogaressa asked, her tone soft and gentle despite the way her claws dug little scratches into the thick, plastic casing of her phone. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

The elemental glanced over at them, his barely visible mouth dipping into a worried frown. Those words were hardly ever followed by anything good, and they all knew it. Still, he nodded and stood, setting both mug and towel on a nearby end table. A small, thin hand reached for him, trembling fingers grasping at the hem of his sleeve. 'He’ll find us,’ Papyrus whimpered, not even seeming to realize that he was speaking a language the elemental didn’t know. 

Grillby reached down to pet the frightened child, though not even his warmth could do much to stop the faint rattle of the little boy’s bones. “Shh. I won’t let you out of my sight.” He lingered long enough for Papyrus’s frightened whimpers to go quiet, then carefully pried his shaking hand away and tucked the blanket securely around him. 

The three adults retreated to the other side of the room, far enough from where Papyrus sat staring at them that he wouldn’t be able to hear what they were saying but still close enough for them to be there should anything go wrong. “Did you get through to the doctor?” the elemental asked, shifting uneasily as he cast another quick glance back towards his charges. 

“They’ll be here as soon as they can, but it might be a few more hours.”

Judging by the way his eyes narrowed behind his glasses, the popping sound Grillby made might well have been a curse. “Is there anything else we should be doing till then?”

“I don’t know.” Dogaressa let out a weary sigh. “Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what to tell them.” 

Dogamy wrapped an arm around his mate’s shoulders. He was grateful that she’d been the one to speak to the doctor, if only because she’d no doubt done a better job describing the nightmarish symptoms than he would have. “The way the kids are reacting, it’s almost like they were poisoned.” 

“I don’t think so. Grillby said the thing that took Papyrus didn’t touch Sans, right? So it can’t be poison since they have the same symptoms. Whatever it is has to be infectious.” 

It did make a certain amount of sense, given what they’d seen. When the trio had arrived, Papyrus had been much worse off than his brother. The younger boy had been weak and listless, barely aware as they did their best to tend to him. He’d only reacted to the presence of his sibling and the strong hum of magic between them. Now, though Papyrus had made little in the way of improvement, the pair were on a much more even keel. It was as if all the fight had gone out of Sans and the older boy had surrendered himself to whatever it was that had struck down his brother. The magic hum was still there, Dogamy’s senses barely aware of the tingling sensation of it even when he wasn’t focused on the little skeletons, but it wasn’t the powerful song it had once been. It all pointed to a high probability that, whatever this thing was, Sans had caught it from Papyrus. There was just one problem with the theory. “But we aren’t sick.” An unsaid ‘yet’ hung heavy in the air. The three of them stubbornly ignored it.

Grillby glanced back at the children once more. The flames that wreathed his head were burning low, but still they crackled and popped with nervous tension. “Most elementals don’t get sick very often, especially fire elementals. We just aren’t affected by the same sorts of things.”

“And the two of us haven’t had much direct contact with the kids,” Dogaressa pointed out. For the most part, they’d been too busy to sit with the pair the way their guardian had. And when they had found themselves at a loss for what to do, they’d taken up anxious pacing the likes of which was sure to wear a hole in their carpet before long. 

“Maybe we should keep it that way, at least for now.” The words left a sour taste in Dogamy’s mouth even as he said them. He didn’t want to keep his distance. He wanted to protect the little skeletons. The instinct to go to them, to wrap them up in his arms and cuddle them until all their fear and pain was nothing but a distant memory, was as strong as if they’d been his own pups. And from the look Dogaressa shot him, he knew she felt the same. Something almost like betrayal flashed in her eyes, but it fled the moment it appeared. She hated it as much as he did, but they both knew it was true. If whatever was affecting the kids really was infections, they couldn’t run the risk of letting it spread any further. 

The sudden, frightened yipping of a child’s distress bark made the dog’s fur bristle. Papyrus sat stiffly on the couch, bones rattling in a mix of fear and skittish tension. His wide eye sockets, still shadowed by dark blue smudges, shone with tiny pinpricks of wavering light. 'Bad thing!’ he cried frantically in their direction, his weakened voice raised in a squeaky, panicked yelp, 'Danger!’

The trio moved as one, each of them consumed by the need to hold the boys close and protect them from harm no matter the risks. However, they didn’t get very far. Dogamy had barely taken a step when he found himself rooted to the floor. Something thick, viscous, and black as an underground night had wrapped itself around his feet. He growled as he yanked at the offending substance, but whatever it was showed no signs of releasing him any time soon. In fact, it looked like it was growing. 

Heat assaulted the side of his face as Grillby’s flames suddenly roared. Dogamy was certain that if he and Dogaressa had been any closer their fur would have been singed by the ferocity of it, but the blaze did little to halt the movement of that creeping darkness. It quickly slithered around the elemental’s legs, hissing and bubbling as it rose but continuing on none the less. Dark, acrid smoke billowed from it, making both dogs press their paws over their faces to try and block out the toxic odor. The guards barked frantically as they both fought against the hold of the living shadows that had trapped them, but no matter what they tried they could not free themselves. They’d never had much in the way of projectile attack magic, and what they did possess passed harmlessly through the darkness. Dogamy tore a chunk of it away from his legs only for the freed piece to liquify and wrap itself around his hands, effectively gluing them together. Only the elemental’s fire seemed to do anything to the inky substance, and even that was a loosing battle. It grew with frightening speed, pulling the monsters down towards the floor as it rose up and wrapped itself around their bodies. The guardsman could do nothing but watch through stinging, watering eyes as Grillby’s light vanished into the thick sludge. A moment later, everything went black as he too was pulled down into the seemingly endless darkness.

Dogamy struggled against the thick, alien substance wrapping itself ever tighter around him. It wound across his waist. Over his eyes. Around his neck. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe! The thing was going to kill him! The guardsman tried desperately to tear his way out of the smothering shadows, but his claws raked through the thick, cold substance as if it were harmless water. His limbs screamed in pain, joints protesting against a force that sought to break them. His chest burned as he struggled to draw in even the smallest bit of air. There was no way out. He was going to die here, wrapped up in a darkness so thick that it blotted out everything and left him feeling like he was slowly sinking into an abyss that he would never find his way out of. With what little breath he had left, Dogamy screamed for his mate, hoping against hope that Dogaressa would hear him somehow and know that in his last moments he was thinking of her still. A muffled, broken sound like a distorted chuckle echoed around him.

Suddenly, a spot of almost unbearable heat broke through the cold, liquid mass surrounding him. The echoing sound rose to a piercing screech. Everything around him was hissing and churning like a pot of boiling water. The darkness broke apart, racing away until every last drop of the tar-like substance had ripped itself free from him. Dogamy fell to the floor with a thud. He coughed and gasped, cool air finally soothing the burning pain in his lungs, and blinked rapidly to clear his blurry vision. Dogaressa’s face swam into view. She was in a heap nearby, her tongue lolling out of her mouth as she gasped like a fish out of water. Her fur was a mess of matted spikes. Her eyes were watering and unfocused. But she was alive. She was alive, and that was the most wonderful, beautiful thing Dogamy had ever seen. 

The living shadow which had nearly ended their lives had retreated under the sudden assault, condensing into a smaller puddle nearby. As the guardsman watched on with muted horror, a hunched, misshapen figure rose from its hidden depths. Eyes like drooping pits glared out from a bleached white face. Pale hands, looking almost as melted as the dripping, roiling darkness of its body, clutched at a steaming hole in the thing’s side. It opened its mouth and a hideous screeching sound poured forth. What might have been words were distorted beyond all comprehension, yet its anger was plain as day.

What answered it was a strange sound, a wavering sort of growl that seemed like it should have been much deeper than it really was, and Dogamy’s bleary gazed followed it to find Sans swaying on his feet. The boy was partially transformed, his features warped and twisted into something unnatural. His mouth hung open, split jaw studded with blunt canine teeth, smoke billowing out of him with each heaving gasp. One of his his eyes was dark and empty, but the other blazed with burning blue magic that escaped the confines of his skull in little wisps. That light flickered, unsteady as the boy’s shaking legs. His chest expanded as he drew in a deep breath and stained light began to shine once more from inside it. Sans staggered and pitched forward, collapsing on the wooden floor in a heap of bone. Every trace of sharpness melted away, replaced by familiar, soft features as he slipped out of his half-transformed state. The blue light in his eye guttered out, leaving only darkness in its wake. 

Papyrus was at his brother’s side in an instant. He tried desperately to drag the other skeleton away, never once taking his eyes from the horrible sight of that looming figure as its molten body churned around the charred, smoking hole the blast had left. The boy whimpered, shaking hands pulling at cloth and limp, skeletal limbs, but he barely had the strength to move himself let alone carry his brother. All he manged to do was press the both of them against the side of the couch where he cowered in the encroaching shadow of the entity.

A white hand extended towards him, steady despite the slow slide of thick black sludge that sloped down what could be generously called the thing’s arm, and Papyrus stopped dead in his tracks. Both children went chillingly still as their souls lit up like little beacons, soft blue light shining out from beneath their shirts. That pale hand slowly curled into a fist and the skeletons shuddered and spasmed as their souls were truly summoned. Light danced in their eyes, flickering madly in hues that the dog had never seen from either of them before. The hand pulled back towards the shifting mass that might have been the intruder’s body. Papyrus staggered to his feet, swaying dangerously as he took an unsteady step forward. His head lolled to the side, arms dangling limp and lifeless. He shuffled forward for a moment or two then collapsed in a twitching heap. Sans seemed to try and stand as well, but all he managed to do was heave himself up on his hands and knees for a moment before crashing face first onto the ground.

The sound of distorted laughter came again, hissing and bubbling. The stranger unclenched its hand and the children went still, the light of their souls slowly fading to a weak pulse. It rose up, liquid shadow gathering itself into a tall, imposing figure. The thing did not walk so much as slide forward, leaving a trail of inky goo on the floor that rolled along after it just a little too slowly. It leaned over the fallen pups and Dogamy felt his own soul shudder with dread inside him. He tried to push himself upwards, but his limbs felt like lead weights. Dogaressa growled beside him, snarling as she too tried and failed to rush to the children’s aid. 

The guards let out matching yelps of fear as pale, white hands reached down, but the touch was not cruel as they’d feared. The stranger pet the children almost gently, seemingly unbothered by the thin, pleading whines that the action drew from them. It bent down a bit lower and wrapped long, sagging arms around their thin waists. 

“No,” Dogaressa moaned as the entity slowly stood, one skeleton child tucked under each arm, “s-stop.”

The stranger turned its face towards her, empty eyes tilted down as it regarded the fallen guards. Something about the tilt of its head told Dogamy that they must have been an amusingly pathetic sight. The suggestion of movement swam at the edge of the dog’s vision, a hint of swirling darkness that vanished as soon as he tried to look at it. A thin smile stretched across the specter’s face. It dipped its head in a gesture that was almost familiar, then took a single, gliding step and was gone, the children vanishing along with it. 

Dogamy pressed his face to the ground. He clenched his teeth together so hard his jaw ached. How could this have happened? How could he have been so weak? He was a member of the royal guard. It was his job to protect the people of Snowdin, but he couldn’t even save two innocent children. Bitter tears began to pool on the floor below him. 

“Dogamy.” Dogaressa’s weary voice cut through the haze of misery clouding his mind. Though his aching body felt as heavy as the whole of Mount Ebott, the guardsman managed to raise his head. His mate had dragged herself a little ways away from him. Her outstretched paw rested on the fallen, ashen shape of what should have been a monster. Dogaressa looked back at him over her shoulder, anguished fear shining in her brown eyes. “Help.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet some of you thought this update would never come. And I bet some of you are gonna wish it never had. Between trips, birthdays, working on two big fics, and adding a new smaller fic, it's taken far too long to get this chapter to the place it needed to be. And I wasn't going to rush or force it because ... well ... 
> 
> I’ll be honest, this is the most depressing thing I’ve ever written. That’s … that’s really saying something. I promised that this story has a happy ending, and it does. It truly does. But getting there … it’s gone to a place so dark that it’s surprised even me. So, umm, please don’t read this if it’ll cause you mental and emotional harm. I’m serious here, **PLEASE** don’t do it. You can wait for the next chapter, there will be enough of a recap from another pov that you won’t be lost. You don’t have to know the details of what happened here. Your mental and emotional health is more important. Take care of yourself.
> 
> But for those of you who do enjoy delving into a story that’s truly, truly dark in every sense of the word …

It was the scent that came to Sans first, dominating his senses as his weary mind slowly clawed its way back to consciousness.  Sick sweetness.  Cold metal.  A chemical cleanliness so ingrained in his memory that he couldn’t even fight the urge to be quiet, stay still, and obey.  

A lab.  THE lab?  No … no, the sounds were wrong.  This place was smaller.  The echoes of his breathing were close.  Too close.  And not alone.  There was someone else in this space with him.  He could hear their breath, shallow and strained, not too far away.  Was that … brother?  He thought he could feel the familiar presence of Papyrus close by, but his magic was so faint.  So weak.  Maybe, if he could reach him …

Sans tried to push himself up from the hard, flat surface he’d been lying on.  Thick straps held him down, pulled tight across his limbs and waist.  Instinctive panic flashed through his mind, so strong that not even ingrained obedience could smother it.  Restraints meant bad things!  Suffocating pain and burning sickness.  Needles and saws and sharp, sharp things he had no words for.  He had to get away!  Sans arched his back and clenched his fists, fighting against restraints that refused to give even an inch.  The boy longed for the strength and power of his other form.  He reached for that magic, but he’d only so much as brushed against the more animalistic part of his soul before fatigue forced him to release it once more.  Pain washed over him in waves.  He shuddered, biting back a low moan at the sensation.  The toxic energy he’d siphoned from his sibling had laced itself through his aching body, and each pulse of the magic that should have sustained him only managed to spread the infection further.  His shallow breathing stuttered.  Stalled.  Choked.  His soul froze in his chest, heavy and cold, the rhythm of its pulse ceasing for an agonizing moment that seemed to stretch into oblivion only to then shudder, lurch, and begin beating anew.  

“I see you’ve decided to join us.”

Sans gasped, eye sockets flying open just in time to see a tall, dark shape loom over him.  His master’s warped face stared down at him, mouth pulled into a ghastly imitation of a smile.  The tall man let out a bubbling laugh, but it was strange and wrong.  He hadn’t sounded like that before.  Sans knew the doctor’s cold, commanding voice.  It would haunt his dreams forever.  This wasn’t it.  Those hadn’t been words.  The hissing, scraping sound couldn’t have been speech, it was barely a voice at all, but he’d heard the words buried in it somehow.  

The man turned away from him, walking out of his sight with a gliding, unnatural gait.  Sans strained to see where he’d gone.  His skull felt as if it were filled with thick, heavy sludge, but he managed to lift it just enough to see where he was.  Colorless light from flickering bulbs up above him did little to warm the dim space.  Dusty wooden tables crowded with vials and tools were shoved up against slick, grayish walls.  A cluttered desk sat in the corner, overflowing with spilled papers.  The tall man rummaged through an open drawer, metallic objects clattering around inside it as he searched.  And nearby, strapped down to a metal table that Sans was certain mirrored the one he found himself trapped on, was his brother.  

Papyrus lay still, silent save for his strained, wheezing breath.  Under the dim lights, his bones looked dull and gray, as if his entire body was coated by a thin layer of dust.  Sans let out a keening whine, calling to his sibling.  He struggled against his bonds, straining to reach towards Papyrus, but even that token bit of resistance exhausted him.  He’d never be able to free himself like this, let alone help his brother.  There had to be some other way.

Sans summoned up the dregs of his magic.  Though the once deep well of his power had all but run dry, there was just enough left to answer.  He could feel the pulse of magic thrumming in his skull.  The already drab looking room he’d found himself in turned stark and colorless before his eyes, but against that ashen backdrop he saw swirls of vivid magic.  His own blue power drifted around him like a mist, threads of yellow twisting lazily through it in luminous, shifting patterns.  He’d seen this once before, when this ability had first manifested in him, but it looked different now.  His aura was so much smaller than it had been, the light it cast dimmed by the dark energy that wormed its way through his bones.

A glowing thread of magic snaked through the air at his side, connecting him to Papyrus.  The deep blue aura of his brother’s magic burned low around him, even the sparks of once vibrant orange which danced through it now dull and faint.  And at its center, hidden away inside his chest, glowed the sleeping skeleton’s soul.  Black energy had tangled itself around that soul, squeezing against it with every pulse.  That same darkness crawled through the bridge of light connecting them, and Sans could feel its grip on his own core as they beat in time with one another.  

With no small amount of reluctance, the boy forced himself to look away.  He expected to find another bright aura lighting up the room, but to his surprise that wasn’t quite the case.  Bluish-purple hues surrounded Gaster’s hunched figure, colors he knew so well from those awful days when the tall man’s magic would take hold of him, but there was something very wrong with the magic he saw now.  At first he thought it was simply dimmed, diminished even past what he saw in himself and Papyrus, but that wasn’t true.  Billowing plumes of magic still clung to the man, but they’d been darkened into shifting, inky shadows.  It was almost as if the magic itself had been charred black.

The doctor straightened, the prize he’d been looking for held tight in his hands, and when he turned Sans saw something drifting after him.  At first glance it seemed to be a haze of yellow.  It was almost nothing like the threads of pale yellow that wove through his own aura though.  This color was muddied, stained with an otherworldly darkness that leached everything bright and brilliant from it.   Seeing a third color of magic around the tall man shouldn’t have all that unusual even if he couldn’t remember his master using yellow magic in anything except his artificial spells, but the more he stared the more Sans saw that this new color wasn’t part of the doctor’s magic.  At least, not the way it should have been.  This inexplicable aura clung to the tall man, not so much a cloud surrounding him as a shadow pulled along by his every movement.  Thick strands of magic tied the two together, dark, sickly yellow and nearly blackened purple passing between them to as the two auras bled into one another.  And through it all, staining the already murky mixture, was red.  

Sans remembered the red.  Its scent.  Its bite.  Even warped as it was, so dark and deep that only its shine revealed the energy’s true nature, he knew it.  That redness sang inside of him when he used his own magic, with loud, insistent notes that pulled him along and stirred the blue flicker of his power into a mighty fire.  It screamed inside the doctor now.  

Terror gripped the small boy’s soul as he watched his master approach Papyrus.  He didn’t know what Gaster intended to do with them, but as a pale, misshapen hand crept closer to his sleeping sibling it triggered an old fear that he doubted he’d ever let go of.  When the tall man called, there was no telling what he’d do to them.  What he’d take from them.  Sans couldn’t even count how many times he’d been left alone, shaking the dark, wondering when or even if his brother would return.  Back then he’d been so sure that one day, when the tall man had finished his taking, there would be nothing left of them at all.  

“no!” he yelled, unable to keep his dread contained.  Though the word came out scratchy and faint, it was loud enough to make the man’s hand freeze in place.  Sans closed his mouth quickly, teeth clacking together, as he realized what he’d just done.

“So you really can speak,” doctor Gaster said with his parody of a voice.  There were no syllables or discernible patterns to be heard amidst the garbled mess, but in their place was intent and meaning that could not be ignored.  He turned towards Sans, tainted magic mixing and burning in the boy’s altered vision, and a smug grin stretched his features.  “I always had a feeling you understood more than you let on.”  

Sans whined in fright.  The blue fire in his eye winked out, plunging him into perfect darkness for a few horrifying moments.  His soul seized, pulse stuttering.  At last his normal eye lights flickered back to life as the ebb and flow of his magic stabilized itself.  The dull gray lab was once more tinted with subtle color.  The auras had vanished again, hidden away though very much still present.  Sans didn’t spark the magic that let him see those veiled colors again.  He was too exhausted to try and too afraid of what he might find if he did.  The boy let his head fall back, landing on the table with a thud that sent echoes ringing through his skull.  He heard the quiet hiss of a chuckle slowly approaching, and a moment later his former master’s shadow fell over him once more.  

“You always were full of surprises 1-S.  I almost wish I could keep you.”  

Sans didn’t see the distorted hand coming towards him until it was already patting his skull.  He twisted his neck, trying to bite the offending appendage, but Gaster hadn’t lingered and his teeth snapped closed on empty air.  Though terror still gripped at the boy’s soul and mind, he pushed past it as best he could.  He growled low in his throat, the sound morphing into an enraged hiss as the tall man neared Papyrus again.  Sans didn’t want this person anywhere near his brother.  Not now.  Not ever!

“Ooh stop, there’s no need for that.  I’m helping him really,” Gaster said.  “If there truly is anything left to be helped.  By all accounts, the anti-magic should have destroyed 2-P already.  He never would have been able to survive in the void at all without Determination, and he certainly doesn’t have enough of that to last for very long.  Physical magic and void magic are opposites, all the theories say they should destroy each other on contact.”  

Sans shuddered as the man bent towards Papyrus, pale hands ghosting over his sleeping sibling’s skull in a touch that, had it come from anyone else, might have been affectionate.  

“But they didn’t.  Perhaps it’s not just the anti-magic in me that changed.  It’s possible, at least.  After all, Determination isn’t like other kinds of magic.  It’s human will.  The purest essence of a strength that can persist beyond death.  The power to rewrite reality.”  A hint of something manic glinted in the man’s eye sockets and his fingers curled around the child’s small skull like grasping talons.  “Anti-magic mixed with Determination.  Power infused with will.”  

A faint glimmer of magic flickered around the man, but the violet light went out just as quickly as it had appeared, swallowed up by wisps of dark shadow.  Gaster grimaced, a dull roar of static spilling from his twisting mouth.  He tried once more to call on the deep purple magic that should have answered so readily to him, but only darkness twined between his fingers.  

“Well … no matter.  I have other ways.”  The tall man sounded calm, or at least as calm as he could sound with the crackling noise that had replaced his voice, but his hunched, trembling shoulders betrayed him.  He slunk to a nearby table, walking with such fluid, slumping motions that he hardly seemed to ‘walk’ at all, and retrieved a strange device that Sans couldn’t remember seeing before.  A dull whine of electricity emanated from the boxy metal casing.  

The doctor held up a thin rectangular frame connected to the machine with a simple black cord.  In it was fixed something clear that the boy thought might have been glass.  Sans could see his master’s distorted face through it as Gaster glided back towards his sibling.  As he watched, the clear screen lit up with shapes and colors.  He saw numbers, maybe even words, but could not read them.  The tall man, however, certainly could.  He panned the screen over Papyrus, mumbling to himself in the way he always used to when something caught his attention back in the labs.  Slowly he moved the screen around the sleeping child and then, as his cracked eye sockets widened with sudden realization, he turned the device away.  It lingered there, pointed at the space between the two children where Sans knew their magical bond hid just beyond his own sight.  

Gaster’s hollow gaze flicked to Sans and then back to the screen.  “Have you linked your soul with his?” he asked as he stared in wonder at what his invention showed him.  “Fascinating.  No wonder he managed to hold on so long.  It won’t save him though.  You know that, don’t you?”

It should have been a threat.  Sans knew those cruel words and what they could mean.  And yet, for as nightmarish as the tall man’s broken voice was, there was no warning in it.  Only cold, unfeeling certainty.  Sans didn’t know which was worse.  The small skeleton shook, the clatter of bone on metal deafening in the otherwise eerily quiet room.  He tried to growl, but the sound died off into a pathetic whimper.  

“He’s dying, 1-S,” Gaster pressed, his dark form looming over the small captives.  “I tried to protect him in the void but he wouldn’t listen and ran from me.  That energy’s in him now, and there’s no coming back from that.  He doesn’t have enough Determination to survive it the way I did.  He’s dying.  And now so are you, and that’s your fault.”

Dread gripped the boy’s fluttering soul like a vice, squeezing harder than the poisoned darkness ever could.  That couldn’t be true, could it?  Sans didn’t much care if he died anymore.  He was tired of hurting.  Tired of fighting.  Tired of everything.  But he kept going because of his brother.  Papyrus needed and cared for him.  Even when nothing else seemed worth fighting for, that had been enough.  And now … now …

The doctor held his free hand out in a sweeping gesture, the thin band of his arm drooping unnaturally, and a scowl twisted his warped features even further.  “If you hadn’t run, none of this would have ever happened.”

“n-no … you … “  'you hurt us,’ Sans wanted to say, but the excuse felt hollow.  Living in the lab hadn’t really been 'living’, the monsters he’d come to know and care for had taught him that, but it had been better than this.  He’d gladly take a lifetime of hurt if it would spare Papyrus.  But, that wasn’t his choice to make.  Not anymore.  

“Blame me all you like.  It doesn’t matter, you don’t have much time left anyway.  But I know you, Subject 001-S.  I know you’re the one behind the escape, and none of this would have ever happened if you’d just behaved like you were supposed to.”

The doctor turned away, but Sans didn’t watch him go.  It felt as if a heavy weight had been lodged inside his ribcage.  Gaster’s words echoed in his mind, the truth behind them sinking in and dragging him down.  If he hadn’t insisted they find a way out of the lab they’d been born in, the boy was certain that he would have died there.  But, Papyrus would have still been there too.  Alone, but alive.  Maybe not even alone.  Maybe the tall man would have made another packmate for his brother.  Someone better, not a failure like 1-S himself.  Someone who could actually protect him.  But Sans had insisted they leave.  He’d brought them to a place of cold, hunger, and sickness, and set in motion the chain of events that had led them to this place.  The boy felt his weak pulse skip a beat.  His vision blurred, eye sockets prickling as his weary body tried to summon up enough magic to create tears.  He’d done this.  It was all his fault.  

Sans went rigid as he heard a shrill scream.  No, not heard.  Felt.  The cry was resonating inside of him, stronger even than the guilt that clawed at his soul.  The small boy’s skull whipped to the side, eye sockets going wide and dark at the scene playing out before him.  He watched in horror as the doctor removed his hand from his brother’s shuddering chest.  A gleaming white soul stained with a smothering web of black magic was clutched in his fist.  

“wait,” Sans managed to cry, his words coming out choked and desperate.  “no!”

“I’m doing him a favor, 1-S,” the tall man said as he placed the small, struggling soul inside a glass cylinder full of a thick, faintly green liquid.  With his free hand he pressed a button on the tube’s metal base and light began to shine from within.  At last he released the stolen soul, but it did not fade from view or return to Papyrus’s body like it should have.  Instead it quivered in place, held captive by the glowing substance surrounding it.  Nodding to himself, Gaster retrieved a small, polished scalpel.  “I’m putting 2-P out of his misery while there’s still something left of him.”

“ **n o !** ”

Pale hands moved.  Liquid sloshed.  Metal flashed in the glowing light.  And then …

Sans howled in agony.  His brother’s voice rang out with his own, silent but undeniably present.  Had the pain reached him through their bond, or was his own soul simply breaking?  He didn’t know, and he didn’t care.  He clung to that pain, that voice, and the shared torture that let him know he at least wasn’t alone.  But the cry faded, surrendering to a weighty silence which carried a truth that he could not accept.  He let out another long howl, his cry full of such inconsolable misery that even the stoic doctor shuddered as he heard it.  

“Be quiet,” the tall man muttered, and the sound of his voice sparked something else in Sans.  The only thing strong enough to cut through his despair; anger.

The boy arched his spine, ribs creaking and threatening to snap as the leather straps pressed down on him.  A grinding sound echoed off the walls as he tried to wrench his arms free, the tiny, delicate carpals of his wrists scraping together.  He yowled and thrashed, fighting a battle against his restraints that he never had any hope of winning.  Rage charged the magic that burned through his soul, but even that fire could not fuel the transformation that should have come so easily to him.  His sharpened teeth ground together, claw tipped hands scratching the slick metal table that trapped him, but no matter how he forced it the changes stopped there.  

Desperate, he tried to spark an attack instead.  This body wasn’t made to withstand the force of the resonating blasts he and his sibling could generate.  Even if he managed to build up enough power, releasing that beam would crack his skull open.  But Sans didn’t care.  His brother had been taken from him, and his entire world had dissolved to a single point of sorrow fueled rage.  

Through the haze of his anger, Sans saw his former master cutting deep into the soul he’d stolen.  He flayed the core open, peeling layers of conjured flesh apart until he’d exposed a shining gem of magic at its center.  The tall man lifted the mangled remains of Papyrus’s soul from the cylinder, leaving only the glittering piece that he’d cut away inside.  Sans roared and snapped at him, spitting sparks as he tried in vain to build up an attack strong enough to kill them both, but the doctor didn’t so much as look at the thrashing child.  The remains in his hands disappeared, flashing once as they returned to the too still chest they’d been taken from and vanishing to merge with the younger boy’s empty shell.  

“He’s not dusting,” Gaster whispered in hushed amazement.  Ever so slowly, as if he thought the slightest touch would make those bones crumble, he placed his hand on the silent body.  “Why isn’t he dusting?”

Sans hissed, sending a shower of stinging blue sparks into the air as the man turned to face him.  Magic burned hot and ruthless inside him.  It scorched his chest and seared his eyes.  Sound echoed in his skull, scraping, grinding, and splintering as he struggled to free himself or tear his body apart trying.  He opened his mouth as wide as he could, rounded jaws creaking and beginning to split, and wisps of steaming blue energy poured out.  What little power he had left was running wild, anger and grief transforming it into an inferno that raged beyond his control.  Doctor Gaster turned on his glass screen, holding it out between the two metal tables, and when he brought it closer Sans threw himself against his restraints to try and reach him.  He snapped spat like a rabid animal even as he nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket.  

The tall man looked up from his glowing screen.  His cracked eye sockets narrowed, the deep shadows inside them growing darker.  “What did you do?”

The only response was a low, crazed growl.  Sans threw himself against his bonds again, his teeth coming ooh so close to catching the drooping blackness of his target’s arm.  With a crackling snarl of his own, Gaster jerked his hand forward and grasped the child’s skull, slamming it down onto the table.  Sans felt his own soul stutter, everything in him going still for one immeasurable moment.  Then the moment ended just as quickly as it had come and a yowling cry burst from his aching throat.  A stray wisp of blue magic drifted from his mouth, but the light inside him and the furious blaze that had caused it had gone out.

“The anomaly.”  A slow smile of realization slid across the doctor’s features.  “So you’re behind that energy skip I felt.  Very interesting.”

The tall man moved so quickly that Sans didn’t even realize what was happening until it was too late.  A cold hand thrust deep inside his ribcage, easily sliding through the steaming cloud of energy trapped within.  His anguished wails were cut short as his magic was manipulated against his will, forcing the core of his being to manifest.  Long fingers wrapped around his soul.  He howled and bucked against the foreign presence that filled his small chest.  The doctor slowly withdrew, pulling out his wildly beating soul.  Sans could feel the energy tethering his body and soul together begin to stretch.  He gazed up, sockets wide and watering, as the tall man pulled his core further and further away from him.  Gaster released his skull as he backed away from the table, moving just beyond his captive’s reach.  The scalpel flashed in his grasp, its blade reflecting the dim light.  Dark blue liquid still dripped from its tip.  It brushed over the boy’s magic core, razor thin edge skimming along its surface.  

“I wonder … “

Sans screamed as the blade suddenly pressed down, piercing through the flesh of his soul.  He had endured this torture before, when the doctor would cut into his body and magic for the sake of one of his experiments, but never without the numbing safety of green magic and medicine.  This time he felt every moment as that blade cut into very heart of his being.  His former master’s intent wormed its way past the raw wound of his grief.  Not cruelty, at least not as he knew it, but a cold, unsympathetic fascination.  And beneath it, something sickeningly triumphant and ooh so very determined.  

And then it stopped.  For a few blessed moments there was nothing.  No pain or anger or sorrow.  Not even peace, no matter how the child might have wished for that.  Only quiet darkness.  He was suspended in that nothingness, a place not even time could touch.  Then he shuddered, body arching as his soul began to beat once more, and it all came crashing back.  

“Fascinating,” the tall man said as he stared down at Sans, unbothered by the way his creation writhed on the table.  

Sans wanted to snarl and snap at him, to take revenge for his poor brother, but all that came from his slackened mouth were feeble shrieks of agony.  The tall man moved once more, but the blade did not shine in his hands.  Instead, those half-formed fingers landed on Sans’s head, trailing over his skull with deceptive gentleness.  The boy couldn’t help but remember the way Grillby would hug him close after a bad nightmare, the elemental’s feather light touch radiating a soothing warmth that lulled him back to sleep.  His breath hitched in a wordless sob.  

“If only I could keep you, 1-S.”

The blade pushed deeper, fluid welling up around the intrusion and gushing out of Sans’s wounded soul.  His pulse stuttered.  Skipped.  Stilled.  

And there was nothing.

—-

The soul in doctor Gaster’s hands was dead.  It no longer pulsed nor glowed with magic.  Though it had yet to crumble into glittering dust, there was no denying that the last traces of life had drained away from it, bleeding out with the flood of bright blue liquid that coated his hands.  And then, against all odds, it sprung back to life.  The soul began to beat again, each spasm pumping more of that sticky fluid out of the gaping wound he’d carved into it.  His creation’s body twitched on the table, chest jerking upwards with a wheezing gasp of breath, but the subject’s open eye sockets remained dark.  

He pressed the blade deeper in, careful  not to cut too far just yet, and watched the whole thing happen again.  Dead, then alive.  The body hardly twitched this time, too spent from the process, but it was solid.  It was even breathing.  Very much alive.  The data from his scanner backed up what he witnessed, the device putting rational numbers to an energy that was refusing to behave rationally at all.  0, then 1.  Always 1.  His creation had been trapped at that pathetic number ever since before the pair first escaped his control.  An unfortunate side effect of an experiment gone wrong.  He’d fought so hard to save 1-S that day.  Now he wondered if all that work had been for nothing and his creation would have stabilized on its own.  0, then 1.  Dead, then alive.  

Gaster carefully removed the scalpel as he studied the core in his hands.  It was a curious thing, at first glance very similar to the one he’d removed from 2-P.  Void energy was wrapped tightly around it, the anti-magic that should have sought only to destroy its energy instead morphed into something more content to mix with its host, spreading slowly until it engulfed everything in its path.  And beneath the twisting thorns of inky blackness was the brilliant white of a young monster’s soul.  Its surface bulged beneath the dark energy, swollen and bruised.  Though its glow was faint, far diminished from the sight he’d witnessed so many times back in the lab, the color it radiated was still the same; shifting shades of cool, calming blue.  He’d never meant for the core he’d created to look like this.  At the time, Gaster had attributed the unprecedented regeneration to his own work.  Determination could do many unexpected things when it was mixed with the right amounts of monster magic.  But now, he had to wonder how much of that unexpected growth had truly been his doing.

It seemed almost a shame to destroy his creation.  Even if he’d never intended it, he’d managed to make something truly unique.  If only he still had his laboratory and position, he would have loved to study the affects of this anomaly.  If his creation could survive a wound like this outside of containment, there was no telling what else he might be able to endure.  Perhaps 1-S could even survive the effects of the void poisoning.  If being trapped forever on the edge of death could even be called surviving.  

Gaster rubbed his thumb over the soul’s yielding surface, feeling the raised texture of scars left by his own hands.  He could feel the faintest stirrings of emotion from within, so much quieter now than when he’d first removed the core from its host.  Yet, they were there.  As was the tether he’d seen on the scanner.  A link between two broken souls.  It should have snapped the moment the remains of 2-P’s soul were removed from containment, but it hadn’t.  1-S, stubborn as ever, had found a way to keep it active and, in doing so, to continue feeding new energy to what was left of the other subject.  The two pulsed as one now, trapped in the same loop which kept them suspended just a breath away from dust.  

0, then 1.  What sort of power had done this?  It had to be Determination, after all 1-S had more of that than any monster in history.  Well, with the exception of Gaster himself.  If he was being honest, he didn’t actually know if the human magic he’d been infused with was greater or less than what he’d injected into his creation.  Did he have the potential for this as well?  And if he didn’t, when he took back what was his, would this defiance of death come with it?  Did he even want that?  

Some part of 1-S was trapped in time, quantum locked to a single moment when he’d been left with only the smallest fraction of life.  The world still moved around him and he moved with it, healing, hurting, growing, and changing, yet that vital piece of his soul remained untouched.   It was no wonder that nothing he’d tried had improved the creature’s health.  Not even death could break its hold on that fixed point.  0, then 1.  Always 1.  His creation was so determined to live.  But then, so was he.  

This was mercy, at least that’s what Gaster told himself as he dug the thin blade of his scalpel into the yielding construct once more.  That sort of immortality was not worth the price it demanded.  Better to end it now and accomplish what he’d set out to do than condemn his creation to a life that wasn’t truly 'life’ at all.  

1-S did not truly wake, soft, strangled sobs the only sign of consciousness left in him.  Gaster blocked them out.  Even the ever present static screeching of the shadows that haunted him could not distract the doctor from his work.  He cut deep, peeling the conjured soul apart.  Slick blue fluid flowed over his hands.  Flashes of red reflected on his scalpel, the Determination he’d infused his creation with making itself known.  Each new slice brought him closer and closer to what he’d been searching for until at last, buried in the center of his creation’s heart, he found it.

The fragment was oddly shaped and faceted like a chunk of raw crystal.  The last time he’d seen it, it had looked more like a shard, edges still splintered and sharp from where the piece had been carved out of his own soul.  Time, it seemed, had weathered the piece of living magic, softening it into something smooth and sparkling, just as it had with the matching fragment he’d retrieved from 2-P.  Gaster cut the chunk away, sliding his scalpel along its ever so faintly harder edges.  The soft flesh of his creation’s soul parted easily beneath the sharpened blade, blue magic welling up from it and oozing out between his fingers.  He ignored the choked cries from the table until they went silent, the small skeleton’s body going limp.  The soul clutched in Gaster’s hand stilled one more time.  With a final slice, he cut the fragment free and released the slashed, oozing soul, letting it vanish from his sight.

He held his prize tight between his fingers, staring in wonder at the final missing piece of his own soul.  As the remnants of blue magic dripped from it, its natural light could finally shine.  A pale blue glow radiated from the piece, untainted by the ruby core of Determination that had soaked into it once upon a time.  It seemed odd that neither this fragment nor the one before it showed any hint of his own natural purple.  That magic should have still been a part of them, even if the souls that had spawned from those fragments had developed in shades of blue instead.  

Without warning, the fragment suddenly quivered and darted away from him, slipping from his grasp before he’d even realized what was happening.  Gaster reached for it, trying to snatch it out of the air, but was too slow.  He was so sure that it would return to the remnants of the soul that had held it, yet to his surprise it zipped not towards the still form of his first creation but to the glass cylinder of the containment chamber.  It struck the surface with a faint ping, like an insect flying into a window.  The other fragment was moving now too, throwing itself against the other side of the glass as the two soul pieces tried in vain to reach one another.  

Cautiously, Gaster approached the bizarre display.  He reached out and deactivated the containment unit, hand hovering in place for a moment or two as he debated if finding the answers behind this odd behavior was worth the risk he was about to take.  In the end, curiosity won out over caution.  He slowly reached inside and lifted the second soul piece from its liquid magic prison.  

The two fragments rushed together, the second one flying from his hands so quickly that it left a shower of green fluid spraying behind it.  But they did not merge as the scientist had suspected they might.  Instead the two pieces rebounded off one another, drifting apart for a moment or two but quickly rushing back to where they’d been moments ago.  They circled each other, quickly settling into a sort of orbit.  Gaster reached for them, carefully scooping the soul pieces up.  They hovered above his palms, spinning around each other in measured, predictable circles.  How strange.  Shifting his grip, the scientist tried to force the two pieces together, yet for some reason they resisted.  Even trying to get them to orbit closer together didn’t work for long, as they sprung back to their former pattern as soon as the pressure was released.  

Gaster watched their whirling dance in muted amazement.  Their physical presence did not degrade, neither crumbling into dust nor fading back into intangibility in the space beyond space.  No magic leaked from them in radiant waves or visible drips.  They were, against all odds … stable.  And it wasn’t just the fragments, the bodies of his creations had yet to degrade as well.  The faintest light glowed behind their motionless ribs, proof of the mutilated souls which still resided there, but there was no pulse.  No breath.  No life.  The doctor turned his attention away from the remains of his creations.  Perhaps he’d find some good use for what was left of them, but for now they’d served their purpose.

Gaster held the fragments close to himself, eager to finish what he’d started.  He had, much to his own distress, grown used to the gaping hole in his core and the constant agony it caused.  He was accustomed to that pain now, yet not numbed to it.  It still lurked just below the surface, the only sensation he could feel clamoring for his attention the moment he allowed his thoughts to stray.  It pulled at the doctor now, fresh waves of agony rushing up to fill the space his single-minded determination had once occupied.  

He’d just wanted to reclaim his creations at first.  They were legally his, no matter what the king said, and it wasn’t right that some meddling strangers had come to possess them.  He’d needed them back, a need that became all the more pressing as he began to realize the greater connection he had to the artificial lifeforms he’d created.  Back then, he’d entertained the notion that this would be enough.  He needed the pieces of his soul close by where they would be safe under his control.  Only, that wasn’t all he needed.  As the pain from the open holes in his own core grew, the only sensation he could in this numb world had rapidly become unbearable.  It wasn’t enough to reclaim what was rightfully his, nor even enough to rescue the fragments of his own essence from the poisoned shells they had resided in.  He needed to end his suffering.  He needed to be whole again.

Some tiny corner of his addled mind still clinging to reason protested the thought.  'If I put these fragments back and they rejoin with the rest of my soul, the black energy will be able to get to them.  What happens when there’s nothing left of me untouched by the void?  Will there be anything left of 'me’ at all?’  But those concerns flitted away from him before he’d even fully understood them.  They didn’t matter.  Only ending this torture mattered.  

Gaster summoned his soul and held it in his free hand.  Its surface was stained an inky black.  No light radiated from it, purple, white, or otherwise.  There was only a deep darkness through which swirled the faintest suggestions of blending color.  That, and two empty holes.  Each pit was faintly pale around the edges, the darkness rising and receding from them like lapping waves.  He touched one, pressing gingerly at the edge of the carved opening, and let out a pained hiss at the accompanying flood of agony.  Carefully adjusting his grip, he pressed the slowly spinning fragments towards the beating heart of his magic.

The pieces he’d removed so long ago no longer fit the holes they’d left behind.  No matter how he shifted and pressed, biting back pained cries each time one of those shining shards pushed itself away, the fragments refused to go in.  They were, much to his surprise, too big to fit.  His soul had regrown some, a pathetically small amount all things considered, but not enough to cause this kind of discrepancy.  Had he not cut away all the useless soul-flesh that had grown around the pieces of himself?  There shouldn’t have been anything of his creations left behind, yet somehow there was.  Even stripped down to the crystalline cores he’d taken such pains to stabilize years ago, something of them remained.  The rough edges hadn’t been worn down, Gaster realized, they’d grown out.  And now, those pieces were too large and too different to even attempt to fit into the gaping, empty holes they’d left behind.

Snarling in anger, he forced his palms together, pressing the floating pieces flush against his soul despite the searing pain it caused him.  The fragments trembled in his grasp, pushing back against his hand until they managed to wriggle free and return to their unending dance.  They idly spun just beyond his grasp, two miniature stars locked in orbit around one another.  Fragments, yet whole.  His, yet not.  A binary system complete unto itself.  

The doctor let out a crackling roar of rage.  He grasped the edge of the nearest table and overturned it, sending a shower of clutter spilling onto the floor.  Glass tubes shattered, tiny shards skittering across the dusty tiles.  Metal instruments bounced, clattered, and rolled away into darkened corners.  The shadows rose ever higher.  

This wasn’t fair.  This wasn’t right!  They were his!  After all he’d done to reclaim the pieces of himself, was it all for nothing?  Was he really so changed that even the fragments of his own soul could no longer recognize him?

Agony flared with each thudding pulse of his soul, his only cure now forever out of reach.  With an angry, burbling growl, Gaster snatched the two fragments out of the air.  The bones of his hands, at least they had been bones once, squished and oozed around the pieces as they fought to escape his crushing grasp.  

He began to scream but only static came out, pouring forth like a torrent of rushing water.  Even when he closed his mouth, it refused to stop.  It made his body shake and his vision blur, invisible shapes slithering across the floor and up the walls.  He could feel the sound buzzing in the air.  Vibrating the soul shards he held so tightly.  Reverberating inside his softened, sliding bones.  He knew now that he would never be free of it.  It would never end.  

The doctor let himself slide to the floor, slumping into a misshapen mound of white and black.  And the shadows crawled over him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here we are at last. The beginning of the end for To Last the Night and my babyblasters saga as a whole. Man, it has been a very long (loooooong) time coming. And that’s my fault. I’m sorry for it, truly I am. Life got in the way, as it tends to do. There were things occupying my time and attention that I’m glad I did, I wouldn’t have given them up for anything, but I do regret how little time and energy they left me for other things. I regret making those of you who still want to read this wait as long as you did. It wasn’t ever my intention to drag this out. But, at a certain point, it was either take a break and make people wait or … just never finish. And I couldn’t do that. I would hate to leave an ending untold. So, again, here we are. 
> 
> I can only say I’m sorry for all that, and more importantly, thank you. Thank you for sticking with me to those of you who did just that, it means more than I can properly express. You’re the reason I came back to this and will be returning to Ash and Bone as soon as it’s done. The reason why I knew I couldn’t just let these stories go untold. Thank you for anyone reading this now. Even if you never read anything from me before. You’re here now, and that means so much. And a million thank you-s to each and every person, even if they have long since lost interest with this, who ever said a single kind word to me about my fics. You are AMAZING and inspirational and absolutely why I’m still here. I love you all. And I hope you’ll forgive me for the awful, awful things about to happen to these characters. Hey, at least it does have a happy ending. One you won’t even have to wait all that long for. 
> 
> Okay … here we go.

As he woke, the first thing Grillby felt was cold.  It was an unfamiliar and altogether disturbing sensation.

As a fire elemental, temperature wasn’t something that affected him the way it did others.  His world was painted in varying shades of heat.  Ooh he had felt true cold before, the bite of freezing water was something he would always remember in his darker dreams, but that wasn’t what he felt now.  This was a milder kind of cold, like lifeless stone or dying embers.  He shuddered at the thought, unconsciously sparking his internal fire.  It was smaller than he was used to, cooler, and fainter.  As if he were somehow less himself than he should be.  He sparked again, finding that his magic itself was oddly weak.  

“Ooh thank goodness,” a voice said from somewhere above him, “I think he’s coming around.”

He tried to speak, but all that came out was a series of quiet crackles, his soft voice all but unintelligible even to him.  A small, familiar shape was pressed against his hands.  Cool wire frames and flat, smooth glass.  He tried to grab the offered glasses properly only to find that his hand had no fingers, only a pliable mass of low, flickering fire.  It took more concentration than it should have to shape that magical fire into proper digits, though he managed it just the same.  

Grillby pushed himself up on his elbows, more wobbly still than he’d care to admit but unwilling to just lay there no matter how drained he felt.  The scientist had been here, or at least the dark magic he was sickeningly sure was connected to the scientist had been.  It had found the children again.  Where were they?  He tried again to speak, but even he wouldn’t have called those hissing, breaking sounds words.  After a few ragged coughs, each of which sent a small plume of pale ash into the air, he tried again.  “Where?” he said at last.  

The two guards hovering nearby exchanged a look that said it all.  Dogamy whined softly under his breath.  “He took them.”

No.  No!  After all they’d been through, that couldn’t be true!  Grillby tried to sit up fully, but his body felt heavy as stone.  Broad hands helped him up, lingering hesitantly on his arms and shoulders as if torn between an unwillingness to let him go and a fear to touch any place that the fabric of his shirt did not cover.  Ash and tiny chunks of blackened wood tumbled off his shoulders in a rain of dull, smokey gray.  He looked down, only just noticing that his soot smeared shirt was completely unbuttoned.  Normally embarrassment would have had him burning a deep, purplish red, but fear had too tight a grip on him to allow the other emotion in.  

“Why didn’t you go after him?” he asked, rough, crackling, and more than a little accusatory.

“You might’ve died if we had,” Dogaressa snapped, pulling away to cross her arms and allowing her claws to dig into the thick fabric of her cloak.  

He might have snapped right back at her with a retort of his own had her words not sunken in as quickly as they did.  Died?  Him?  But he wasn’t … he hadn’t … had he?  The elemental became aware of a grittiness beneath his palms.  The area around him was covered in dark gray dust.  More ashes, he realized, and not the kind produced by magic fire either.  The air still held the oh so distinct scent of burning paper.  He could see lumps of smoldering charcoal still baring small, unburned sections of once polished wood amidst the pile.  A quick glance around showed him the broken remains of what had once been dining room chairs.  The remaining wood had been hastily cut, chopped into uneven kindling.  Had he truly been so far gone than they’d feared his flame would go out entirely?

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean … “

Dogaressa shook her head, cutting off his awkward apology before he could even get started.  She clearly had neither the time nor need for such things at the moment.  There was no sharpness left in her tone, and the anger in her eyes would not focus on him.  Its true target was elsewhere.  “We couldn’t have tracked him anyway.  He just … disappeared.”

The feeling of coldness returned to the elemental, this time accompanying a terrible tightness in his chest.  “Into a black space?”

“Yes,” she answered, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.  His answer had come too quickly to be a guess, and she knew it.  “You’ve seen it?”

“The thing I first told you about, the black sludge that showed up in the boys’ room.  I saw something that looked like a hand come from it, but I didn’t think,”  He trailed off, unable to put words to what he’d seen and felt that day.  He’d been able to convince himself back then that there had to be a simple explanation for it.  It had been constructs made of dark magic haunting them, clawing their way out from pools of endless shadow.  But that hadn’t been true at all.  It had been the man himself.  “I didn’t realize that’s what it actually was.  It vanished into some sort of … I suppose it had to be a kind of portal.  It was solid black.”

Dogaressa growled, her sharp teeth grinding together.  “It’s got to be the doctor.  That bastard’s the one behind all this I just know it.”  She fished her phone from one of the pockets of her long cloak and stabbed at its buttons with her claws.  As it began to ring, she stood and started to pace, her path eventually leading her deeper into the house as she spoke with someone on the other end of the line.  

“What’s she doing?” Grillby asked Dogamy once they were alone.  

“We’ve got some friends at the Core.  Trustworthy monsters who are trying to help.  So far they’ve not found anything useful about the last royal scientist, but they’re still trying.”

“Are you sure that’s the man we’re looking for?”

“Well … no, but … it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”  The guardsman shifted nervously.  “It’s our best lead.”

Grillby understood what his friend was really saying, though he hadn’t had the heart to say the words out loud.  This was their only lead.  If finding the royal scientist didn’t also lead them to the doctor, there would be no hope of finding the one who’d stolen Sans and Papyrus away.  The children would truly be gone, this time forever.  

“We’ve got an address!” Dogaressa called as she returned.  Her lips were pulled back in a tight, sharp grin that did nothing to hide her simmering anger.  She shoved her phone into a pocket as she walked, marching across the room to where her trusty weapon was propped up against the wall.  “Let’s get going.”  

Dogamy sprang to his feet, quickly going to retrieve his own weapon and join his mate.  The two of them made an imposing picture as they lifted their hoods, normally friendly faces hidden by the dark shadows the fabric cast over them.  They barked to one another, short, sharp sounds conveying a meaning beyond what Grillby could hear.  

“You can stay here until you’re feeling better,” Dogaressa said as she turned towards the elemental once more.  “We’ll find that bastard.”

Grillby shook his head, a thin trail of smoke and sparks following the forceful motion.  He pushed himself upright.  His legs felt weak and wobbly, but he pushed past the heavy, sluggish feeling slowly fading away from him.  Even if he wasn’t sure how much help he’d be, he just couldn’t stay behind this time.  Not when everything had gone so very wrong.  He’d promised not to let the boys out of his sight, to keep them safe, but in the end he hadn’t been strong enough to do it.  He couldn’t just give up now.  “I’m coming too.”

The dogs protested at first, but it was clear that Grillby wouldn’t be taking no for an answer.  And to his credit, he didn’t hold them up much.  The three of them hurried through town, taking every shortcut and back alley they knew of to make it to the river in record time.  There, the Riverperson’s strange wooden boat and its hooded captain waited, bobbing gently in the current.  They set off as soon as the three of them were safely aboard, already on their way before they’d even breathed a word about their destination.  None of them were surprised by this turn of events.  The Riverperson always knew where you needed to go, sometimes before you yourself did.  

Grillby had a natural fear of the water.  All fire elementals did, it was as instinctive as breathing.  Simple exposure to it wouldn’t kill him, but falling in the river?  That might just do it.  He’d never been able to board a boat without some fearful trepidation, but today he hardly noticed the rushing current or the shimmering droplets it sprayed up towards its occupants.  He kept his gaze forward, watching the subtle shades of stone in the passageway shift from blue to violet to brown as they sped towards Hotland.  

Once they were on dry land again, he’d expected to head towards one of the more populated areas that surrounded the Core.  Perhaps even New Home itself.  After all, it would make sense for an important person like the royal scientist to live there.  Instead they went towards the outskirts, closer to the edge of Waterfall than to the Core itself.  There they found a scattering of buildings, some large and some small but most all of them fairly utilitarian in design.  It was a far cry from the rustic, homey streets of Snowdin.  

Dogaressa wasted no time pinpointing their target.  She checked the address only once, looking down at a hastily scribbled note from her pocket before marching right up to the front door of the tall, plain looking structure.  She did not knock as he’d been expecting her to.  Instead she brought down the blade of her massive battleaxe onto the doorknob, snapping it off cleanly.  She was able to push the door open easily after that and motioned for the others to join her as she ventured inside.  

The interior of the building was just as sparse as the exterior.  It was a house, at least Grillby was fairly sure it was, but one belonging to someone who saw no need in things like decoration or creature comforts.  Everything was simple and plain, the furnishings few and far between.  He saw a straight backed chair.  A coffee table with an abandoned mug settled perfectly into an old water ring.  A bookcase crowded with large, thick texts all neatly arranged in even rows.  But no sign of the kids or of the missing royal scientist.

“Do you smell him?” Dogaressa asked as she edged warily around the room, hunting with sight and smell for some sign that this was the right place.

Dogamy sniffed at the air, letting his nose lead him.  “No.  I smell … skeletons!”

“Shh.”  Dogaressa held up a finger close to her mouth.  “I think I smell it too, but it’s not the pups.  This skeleton’s different,” she said as she inspected the worn looking chair situated in the corner.  “Older.”

“The royal scientist was a skeleton?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Wait, I’m getting something.”  Dogamy took another deep breath only for his concentrating expression to suddenly morph into revulsion and disgust.  He pressed a hand over his sensitive nose.  “That’s it.  The black magic.  Uhg, smells like rot.”

The guardswoman quickly joined him and couldn’t help but sneeze as the foul odor reached her.  She followed it towards the wall, but that was where the trail ended.  She found no door to go through, no box or cabinet in which anything could be hiding, and no sign of the diseased black magic.  “I smell it too, but there’s nothing here.”

“Let me look,” Grillby said as he approached.  He couldn’t smell the tainted magic the way they could, but he trusted in their abilities.  If they said the man they were chasing had been here, then he’d been here.  The only question was; how had he escaped?  It was possible that he’d used another portal, but why here?  There was no sign of a struggle, and if this place was supposed to be his house then surely he would have felt safe enough here to not use that particular trick.  The more likely solution, at least in Grillby’s opinion, was that the former royal scientist had a secret passage hidden somewhere in this room.  

He inspected the wall, knocking on it at various points and listening to the sound it made.   Thunk.  Thunk.  Thunk.  Clang.  The wall sounded different in this portion, as if it had been made of metal.  “There’s something here, but I don’t know how to open it.”

The dogs sniffed around the section of wall, clearly disgusted by the toxic scent that clung to it.  They pushed and scratched, but it would not budge.  “We could break it down,” Dogamy suggested.

“If we have to, but I’d rather not tip him off if he’s down there.”

Grillby kept searching as well, knocking in various places to try and find the point where wall met metal.  At last he thought he found it, and as he shone his own natural light a bit brighter he noticed the subtle line that marked the transition.  He followed the line, mentally marking its path as it went over and down the other side of the metal plane … and off to the side?  Curious, he inspected the new section.  It was metal like the other, but smaller.  A rectangular panel of sorts.  It didn’t react when he touched it, but when he tried sending a quick burst of magic towards the thing it responded with a shrill beep.  The small section of wall lifted up, revealing what looked like a control panel beneath it.  The way in, more than likely, if only any of them knew the code.  

“Good work,” Dogaressa said, peering over his shoulder at the flashing display.  “Now, how do we make it let us in?”

“I might know a way.”  The thing about electronic systems was, they didn’t often get along well with extreme heat.  A fact which Grillby knew all too well.  Channeling heat into his hand, he pressed his palm against the control panel’s surface.  His hand began to glow brighter, the flames turning paler and paler until they were tinged with bright blue.  Metal glowed bright and began to melt under his touch, circuits fizzling and popping as everything broke down bit by bit.  The large panel began to move erratically, sliding back only to surge forward again.  Dogamy caught it as it threatened to close again and pushed against it with all his might.  The gears ground together and stray sparks popped from some hidden circuitry, but it was already too damaged to put up much of a fight.  The metal panel slid open and stayed this time, disappearing into the rest of the wall.  Beyond it lay a long, narrow staircase leading down into the darkness.

“What do you think’s down there?” Dogamy asked, his voice hushed.

“Something the ex-royal scientist doesn’t want us to see.”  Dogaressa  holstered her axe and started down the steps.  “Now we have to be careful,” the guardswoman whispered as they joined her, “we can’t let him know we’re here just yet.  Who knows what he’d do.”

As much as Grillby would have preferred to rush in head first this time, weapons ready and fireballs in hand to stop the wicked man who’d caused Sans and Papyrus such torment, he knew she was right.  The scientist had been hard enough to track down this time.  And with the strange magic clouding their memories of him, if he ran again and took the children with him, they might never find him again.  

The trio slowly descended, wincing at each creak of the staircase beneath their feet.  The large, open space they arrived in was dark, but they didn’t dare search for a light.  Instead, Grillby altered his flames, shifting the manifestation of his magic into a higher, brighter fire that illuminated the empty space.  It was a lab, that much was obvious, but it didn’t look much like the clean, tidy spaces he’d always envisioned science laboratories to be.  This one was crowded and cluttered, each available space full of odds and ends the uses of which the bartender could only guess at.  Dark stains littered the tables like large splotches of ink.  Similar stains marked the floor as well, puddles of blackness merging, smearing, and trailing off in long, messy streaks.  His gaze followed the largest of these trails, as it wound around the room, occasionally splitting off or doubling back on itself but always returning to a central pathway.  Shards of broken glass glittered in his light as he moved further into the foreboding space, following the black gore.  

The further they went, creeping slowly through the darkness, the more disturbing the space around them became.  Tables had been overturned.  Cabinets were knocked over or ripped clean off the walls that had once held them.  More shards of shattered glass littered the floor like a shining carpet.  Various pieces of equipment had been scattered about and now lay in discarded heaps, broken beyond repair.  Towards the back of the room, two metal tables gleamed in the firelight, their once polished surfaces marred with the same inky splotches.  And sprawled on top of those tables were two small figures.

The light went out for just a moment as Grillby’s fire flickered wildly.  Then the three of them were moving, spurred into action by some unheard command.  They sprinted towards the missing children.  Thick leather straps held the pair in place, pinning them to the once polished surfaces like mounted insects on display.  The pair were still.  Not moving.  Not breathing.  

Dogaressa held a pawlike hand over the too still body of Papyrus, Dogamy mirroring her motions as he knelt over Sans.  The two of them stared down intently as they focused on each of the boys.  There was a crisp, tingly sort of sensation that washed over Grillby as they worked, a telltale sign of a monster summoning another’s soul.  That sort of feeling normally meant some sort of battle was about to commence, be it friendly or otherwise, and the results were most often immediate.  But this time there was no flash of light and color as the target’s soul manifested.  There was no answering thread of magic singing in response to the call.  There was just … nothing.  Dogamy slowly lowered his trembling hand.  A low keeping sound rose up from him as he bowed his head, long ears falling forward to hide his eyes.  Dogaressa refused to give up, but her frustrated growls and gritted teeth couldn’t hide the tears beginning to soak her fur.  

Suddenly the three of them went still as they felt a tiny spark of something familiar.  An answer, however faint, to the summons the dogs had been trying so desperately for.  A pale glow, flickering and faint, rose up from Papyrus, and a moment later something finally materialized.  At first Grillby was overjoyed, the sheer relief that they hadn’t been too late so overpowering that he had to reach out and steady himself on the overturned remains of what had once been a shelf.  But then, Dogaressa jerked backwards, her teeth clicking together as she bit back a yelp, and he knew that something was horribly wrong.  

The boy’s soul had shown itself, that much was true, but what he saw could hardly even be called a soul any longer.  It was torn apart, pale conjured flesh cut open to reveal an empty, carved out pit at its center.  Pale blue fluid had welled up in that open hole and dripped onto the boy’s shirt.  Black energy encircled the soul’s remains, the otherworldly energy that had infected the kids, or at least some visible manifestation of it, warping the surface until it blistered and bruises.  The child’s core, the very essence of his entire being, was a mangled, grisly mess.  

Dogamy, spurred into action by the shocking turn of events, focused his energy and tried once more to summon the other boy’s soul.  This time something in Sans answered, but the manifested soul they were greeted with was just as mutilated as his brother’s.  The guardsman staggered backwards, then turned sharply and vomited behind a broken table.  With nothing keeping them tethered any longer, the remains of what had once been bright young souls faded, sinking back into the still, silent bodies that had housed them, their weak light extinguished.  

Grillby let out a wordless cry, his grief spilling over into the wild, snapping crackle of flames that burned white hot through his body.  If only he’d been stronger, if only he’d found it in himself to resist the smothering darkness that had threatened to extinguish him, then perhaps they might have found the boys in time.  Instead they’d arrived too late, only able to see them one last time before they dissolved into dust.  Ash trickled from him, falling onto the stained tiles below.  He’d failed them.  He’d promised to protect them, to love and shelter them, and instead he’d let them be taken away and subjected to a fate so terrible that he hadn’t even thought it possible.

He felt it before he heard it, a creeping sense of dread and wrongness pushing through the anguish that threatened to overwhelm him completely.  It was a buzzing in his skin.  Static in his ears.  A lurching twist somewhere inside him that said something unnatural and dangerous was close by.  Grillby turned quickly, the guards doing likewise as they raised their weapons and let out twin snarling growls.  The shadows in the lab seemed darker than they had been.  Thicker.  Closer.  His firelight could barely penetrate the all consuming gloom.  Yet through it he saw a different sort of light, pale and cool, illuminating a stark white face.  Cracked black pits stared at them.  Those eyes were empty, devoid of light or life as they knew it, yet still they burned with some intense, unknowable presence.  

The man was just as twisted as Grillby remembered, maybe more so.  His hunched, shuddering body oozed with something thick and black.  He did not walk so much as glide, sliding smoothly across the ruined floor.  Inky tracks trailed off behind him, fresh and glistening.  If he’d had legs once, he didn’t appear to any longer.  He still retained something that could be called arms though, uneven tendrils of fluid darkness capped off with pale hands.  More liquid shadows dripped from holes punched in his palms, thick droplets splattering onto tile.  And spinning idly above his outstretched hand were two small, glowing crystals.  They radiated a magic all their own comprised of shifting shades of achingly familiar blue.  

The doctor snatched the two crystals out of the air, holding them possessively close despite how they trembled and fought in his grasp.  He opened his mouth to speak, but in place of words a high, broken screeching sound spilled out of him.  No matter how he moved his featureless slash of a mouth or which words he attempted to form, there was only the scratchy, popping, scraping horror.  

The ruined excuse for a monster turned away from them, surging back into the dark confines of the lab.  But Grillby would not let him go so easily.  He let his fire surge, flaring up from him in a bright plume.  Flames arched from his hands, racing along the walls and encircling the man before he could escape their sight.  The doctor shied away from the brilliant fire, his body compressing far more than any solid being should be capable of.  He let out a bubbling hiss of anger.  

More of the black sludge spilled from his broken hands, landing on the floor.  Only, it didn’t behave the way the other scattered drips had.  This time the blackness grew of its own accord, stretching into a small pool beneath him.  The man grinned a ghastly smile as he stepped into the darkness.  His body began disappearing, sinking into the muck far too quickly for even Grillby to stop it.  But then, just as his torso was about to vanish, the magic crystals in his hands flashed brightly and he could go no further.  The man snarled and spat, a thin trail of black seeping from his mouth, but no matter how he struggled he could go no further.  He puled himself up instead, oozing back through the would be portal.  With a screech of rage that the elemental almost thought he could understand, the doctor turned and fled.  He plowed through the wall of fire that had surrounded him, leaving behind only black gore and the wretched stench of burning corruption.  

Dogamy shook himself as he snapped out of his horrified daze.  “Let’s go, he’s … “  He trailed off, seemingly frozen in place once more.  

His mate gripped his shoulder tightly with one hand, pushing gently at him.  “Dogamy we have no time for this.”

“T-the pups,” he said, sounding unusually lost and small.  “They’re still here.”

All eyes turned back towards the haunting scene.  Grillby’s illuminating fire, already dimmer than it was as he let his defenses drop, stuttered as his breath caught in his chest.  There should have been nothing left of the pair but empty clothes and a scattering of silvery dust.  Yet there they were, just as solid as they had been when the trio had arrived. Their souls had been ripped to shreds, yet their bodies still remained.  They were trapped in a torture that should have killed them.  It wasn’t possible.  Then again, many things he knew to be true about the pair hadn’t seemed possible.  Then he remembered the magic light he’d seen radiate from the crystalline fragments the doctor held.  Shifting shades of blue that he knew ooh so well.  

“You don’t think,” Dogamy began to ask.  It was clear that his own thoughts were spinning in a similar direction to Grillby’s.  He gripped the worn handle of his weapon tighter, confusion giving way to rage as he reached the same conclusion.  He snarled something low and furious in the language of dogs.  

The two guardsmen took off, moving smoothly together without the need for words or signals.  If the man they sought truly couldn’t use his dark portals any more, at least without giving up the magic shards, then it was just a matter of time before they had him.  There was nowhere he could hope to hide from their keen noses.  Grillby hesitated at first, looking back at the children.  It didn’t seem right to leave them there, tied down to that hard, cold metal, but he had no choice.  There was nothing he could do for them like this.  Forcing himself to look away, he sprinted after the dogs and out of the room.  

They might have come too late to spare Sans and Papyrus, but they could at least save them from whatever hellish state their captor had trapped them in.  No matter what, they were going to end this.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really quick, just wanted to say THANKS SO MUCH to the two awesome people who left a comment. I'll go finally respond to those right now. :D   
> Now that I’ve had some time to get things done, here’s the next chapter of TLtN! See, not a long wait at all. Considering the holiday week and all that. Also, to everyone celebrating Thanksgiving this week, hope you had a happy holiday! And to everyone who chooses not to, hope you had a wonderful week and got to do something nice for yourself! 
> 
> (ooh, and, chapter warning for zalgo text, this is the only chapter where it's really a thing though so don't worry too much)

The trio raced through the ruined lab and up the steps.  Even after the slick, black trail dried up, the scent of rotting magic guided them through the house and out the broken front door.  The caverns of Hotland were dim as always, lit only by the glow of red hot magma flowing below.  Grillby was afraid that the dark shape of the doctor might blend in too well for them to make him out, but Dogaressa and Dogamy held no such fears.  Their sharp senses guided them.  They would not allow their prey to escape.  

They sprinted through the cave, away from the red glow of lava and deeper into the twisting darkness of the subterranean kingdom.  The unnatural creature the doctor had become was fast, faster than them to be sure, but without his portals he couldn’t outrun them forever.  Not when the dogs had his scent.  Before long the stone ceiling above them began to change its slope, the craggy walls edging closer together, and Grillby knew that their quarry had made a fatal error.  

He caught sight of a blur of movement up ahead, a shadow darting through the darkness.  The dogs ran faster, panting as they pushed themselves to go ever faster.  Grillby couldn’t quite keep up, but it didn’t matter much.  The passage they were in was becoming tight.  Sounds echoed, bouncing off the unforgiving walls of a sealed exit.  They had the man cornered now.  

With Grillby hanging back to guard the exit, arms extended and hands ablaze, Dogaressa and Dogamy advanced on their cornered target.  He was hunched awkwardly, pressed back against the uneven stones of the cave’s far wall.  There was no way out, not even for him, unless he was willing to release his prize.  The dogs stalked forward as one, each holding their weapons out in a show of force that anyone would be foolish not to take seriously.  

“I don’t know what you did to those kids,” Dogamy snarled, “but you’re gonna pay for it.”

Dogaressa bared her teeth at the man.  “Give back what you stole, and I might be willing to make this quick.”

“M͍̞ ̖͔̥̻̹i͍̣͕ ̟n͎ ̸̞e͉̹̟̫͝.͉̙͎ ”

The entire cavern seemed to freeze in a stunned silence broken only by the distorted hiss of static that lingered around the thing that was once a monster.  

“Did he just … talk?” Dogamy questioned, his gaze darting between Dogaressa, Grillby, and the doctor as if he couldn’t believe what his sensitive ears had just heard.  

“T͝ ͟h ͏e y   ͏a ҉r̷ ͞e̶ ̡ m ̛i̷ ̸n҉ ͜e͘ ,” the man said, the words drawn out and mangled but no less present.  And the more he spoke, the more clear the sounds became.  He slowly straightened his long form, rising up to tower over Grillby and the dogs.  His torso was stretched thin and gaunt, morphing into one long band of pure darkness.  The edges of his mouth quirked upwards in manic glee as he forced the otherworldly sounds that came from it to form something intelligible.  “M i ̴n͜ e.̕ T ̛a ̴k ̢en f r̶o͝ ̶m ͡ m̡e. ͟ ͜Ss̕s̶so I ͏ t̛ ҉oo k̸ t̷h͟ em ͞ ͏b a ̴ck͏.͘ ”

“You killed them!” Dogaressa screamed, her own voice cracking under the strain.

“T͏h̸ ȩ y ̕w̸ e̡re̕ … p ͟a͞ ͏s̛s̶t  ss ҉a ͏ve ing. ̷ ̴Ţa̧ i ͘nt ed͡. ”

“Like you are?” the guardswoman asked, the subtle growl of her question sharper than any curse.

The man laughed, bubbling and terrible.  “I͟ ͝ ͘a͞m ҉ ̛ss̨s͟ t͟r҉o n̢g e͠r.̨ ̨ ͜Į ͝ sss͜s̡ ur͝ ͏vi ve̢. Th ey ̶ w ̢ou̧l͡ ̨d͏   fa ̵ll̛. ”

“They haven’t fallen yet.”  Grillby said, the memory of two small, butchered souls driving him towards a new sense of defiance that felt strange and welcome to him.  “You did your best to dust them but it didn’t work.”

The man tilted his head slowly, his too wide mouth twisting into an ugly frown.  The fragments he clutched shuddered, pushing against his all too yielding hand.  “Th͏ ey ̡ ̷a̧ re͢  ͝l̸ ͡o ͜c͢k e̵d͞. ̵S̷ss͟ta ͝sss͢i͠ s̸ss͢ss. ͝ I͠t w ͞iļl n o͜t ͜ la ss̷s̴t.̢ ”  Again he smiled, what passed for his shoulders shaking as he let out a hissing laugh.  “Y͝o̧u ̧c ̴an̡ ̕ķee p̛ wh at ͞is̶s ̡le ̸f̕t.  Th̨ ̡ey҉   a̛ ̛rȩ u̵ss ̵l͟e͢ssss ̷ ͏to̕ m͞ e ̕ n͠o̵w͜. ”

In a sudden blur of motion that took them all by surprise, Dogaressa threw herself towards the man.  She roared like a wild animal and swung her battleaxe, its blade shining orange in the dancing glow of Grillby’s firelight.  The metal cut deep, burying itself halfway into the column of the man’s torso before finally coming to a stop.  The doctor gasped, cracked, empty eye sockets widening in surprise.  He looked down at the weapon protruding from his body as if unable to fully comprehend its presence there.  Then, with a vicious snarl, Dogaressa yanked the axe blade free.  Inky gore splattered from the open wound, spraying everything around them, but it did not phase the guardswoman.  She swung again, driving the weapon back into the same spot with practiced precision.  His body nearly chopped in half, the doctor howled as he topped backwards.  The sound he made was a mangled, piercing shriek that made both dogs and even Grillby wince in pain to hear.  Yet Dogaressa did not retreat.  She hefted her massive weapon and brought it down once more.  The blade tore through the man’s arm, severing it with a single blow.  

The disembodied hand writhed like a dying insect, spasming and oozing as it lost any semblance of functional form.  And as it did, it lost its grip on the two crystal fragments.  The shards floated upwards, idly spinning around one another.  Dogamy ran forward, snatching up the pair.  When the doctor reached for them, his other arm stretching out towards them as he cried out with a static-ruined moan, the guardsman swung his own battleaxe in a one handed chop that severed the remaining semi-solid limb at the wrist.  He backed away quickly, his weapon held in front of him like a shield, as Dogaressa stood her ground.  

The wreck of a monster struggled to push himself up with what remained of one arm.  Inky sludge dripped from the ragged wound in his torso, each droplet leaving a long tail of shining black behind it.  The more drops that fell, the more strands of blackness connected the two halves of his severed body.  Faster and faster they fell, knitting the wound together, until the man was once more able to slide himself upwards.  Long, oozing tendrils snaked from where his shoulders should be, rushing down to the cavern floor where they slithered towards the pale shapes of his hands.  His cracked eye sockets were half melted, but still they stared at the trio with a wide, unhinged madness.  

“M͘͜ ̶i ̨͘͜n ͝e̵̶ ,” he hissed, more distorted than before.  “T ̷h͘ ̡ơ s e ͜ a̕ r̨ e̴ ̡ ̡m ̷i҉ ͞n ͜e͟!͢ ̶G i҉ v ̷e ͜t ͢h ̸e҉ ͠m͠ ̶̋ B̆ ̑ͨͨ̊ͩA͑͜ ̴͒̏C̷ͧ ͗̉͒͢Kͬͪͨ̚͝!̒ ”

A piercing blast of static made the trio stagger backwards, hands pressed tight over their ears.  Shaking her head to try and banish the ringing left behind by the sudden sonic onslaught, Dogaressa growled and readied herself for another attack.  The man reached for her, but she dodged, ducking underneath an unnaturally long arm and bringing her axe around to strike at where his legs should have been.  Though each hit she managed to land was strong, cleaving easily through the dark muck, the wounds never lasted for long.  And what’s worse, now that he was aware of her intentions, her opponent was smart enough not to underestimate her.  The doctor moved with frightening speed and unnatural fluidity.  Though he had no weapon and employed no traditional magic, at least none that could be seen, his distorted scream and grasping, lengthened fingers were an undeniable threat.   Grillby had been so transfixed by the display that he didn’t notice Dogamy approaching until the other canine suddenly blocked his view.  

“I have to help her,” the guardsman said, the look in his eyes betraying the fear he did not want to show.  

Grillby nodded and held out his hands for the fragments.  They drifted into his palms with no resistance and hovered there, dancing just above his fiery skin, their magic shining with a gentle, blue glow.  Up close he could see how the light shifted, getting brighter and dimmer in a steady pulsing rhythm.  He carefully closed his hands over the pair trapping them between his palms.  They did not struggle against him.  Their power hummed in his grasp, warm and alive.  He knew what he had to do.

“Be safe,” Grillby said, waiting only long enough to see his friend return to the battle before he was up and running.  Behind him, static roared over the sounds of angry barking and the resonating clang of metal on stone, but he did not turn back to see it.  All his focus was on the winding pathway before him and the shining gems of magic he cradled in his palms.  

There were many places he could have gone.  He could break into one of the other houses.  Perhaps hide in a different cavern.  He could even board the Riverperson’s boat and go anywhere from Snowdin to Asgore’s throne room.  But instead he found himself headed right for the ruined lab they’d only just left.  He didn’t know what he was doing, not really.  It was only a hunch, or perhaps wishful thinking, but he knew he had to try.  These weren’t just fragments of the boys’ magic, they were pieces of their souls.  He was sure of it now.  Even if this desperate act proved to be futile, he had to return these stolen pieces of the children he’d failed to protect.  

Grillby dragged the metal tables closer together.  He quickly untied the straps that had held the boys down, burning through the ones that would not release so easily.  For a moment he was frozen in place, staring down at the pair.  They were too quiet.  Too still.  Too fragile.  He held his free hand out over them and channeled his magic, summoning their souls.  Just like when they’d first found the pair, at first there was no answer.  His call to battle went unheeded, as if the vessels before him were truly empty.  But then there was a faint spark of something intangible and a feeble pulse of magic began to shine from within them.  Grillby looked away as the mangled souls faded into view.  The sight was just as ghastly as it had been before.  In fact, it was exactly as it had been.  The souls he saw now were unchanged, neither healing nor deteriorating from their disfigured state.  It defied everything he knew about the nature of souls and magic, but he had no time to question it now.  

With some coaxing, Grillby managed to separate the two crystalline shards.  They would not be moved too far apart, but so long as he kept his hands close enough together they were at least willing to cease their hypnotic spin.  He carefully closed his hands over them and reached out with his own soul, trying to summon something from within them the same way he’d summoned what was left of the souls he was so certain they’d been stole from.  Blue magic answered him in tiny pulses.  Dark and light.  Honest and patient.  He blinked away the ashy tears that gathered in his eyes.  

Slowly, he opened his hands and guided the two crystals towards the souls that shared their magic.  They followed his movements, drifting down willingly until they had each settled in the open hollows of the two souls.  The shards fit perfectly.  Grillby waited, his flames burning low and quiet, for some kind of sign.  But there was no flash of light or grand pulse of power.  He scooped Papyrus’s soul into his hands, not daring pull it any further away from him, and carefully pressed the ragged edges together.  The little soul was cold and still.  Desperate, Grillby sent some of his own magic into it.  A familiar warmth to drive the cold away.  

“Please,” he whispered as he cupped the fragile soul in his hands, “please.”  

The soul’s light, dim and dull, slowly began to brighten.  Deep blues and hints of orange, so very like his own yet somehow different, flashed beneath a blanket of white as ragged edges of conjured flesh began to merge.  Grillby held on, watching in astonished relief as the soul slowly reformed itself.  And then, at last, he felt a pulse of magic beneath his fingers.  First one, then another and another until it settled itself into a rhythm that could almost be called normal.  

Grillby was reluctant to let go, still hovering close even after he’d released the child’s restored soul until he was sure that fragile pulse wasn’t about to stop.  But once he was as certain as he could be, he quickly turned his attention to Sans.  Repeating the process, he held the other child’s soul together and carefully poured his own energy into it until it too began to glow and pulse.  This time the rhythm faltered, skipping and shuddering in a way that frightened him, but each time it failed, it started up again on its own.  The elemental couldn’t explain it, but in that moment he was just grateful that there was any sign of life in that soul at all.  They had been so broken, ripped to pieces and robbed of some precious piece of themselves.  But now they were whole.  Shining.  Alive.  

As he stared in amazement at the pale glow of Sans’s newly restored soul, he noticed something odd.  The dark magic that had poisoned him and his brother was still wrapped tight around it, causing the surface to warp discolor, but there were white streaks where that stain had been cleared away.  Streaks that looked an awful lot like fingers.  Grillby reached down again, placing his hands around Sans’s soul, and found that the marks were a match.  In the places he’d touched with his fire magic, the poison had been burned away.  And it wasn’t just Sans, Papyrus’s soul had similar clear patches on it as well.  All this time he’d been trying to find some way to help them, some cure for the unknown magic poisoning them, and it had been with him all along.  

Grillby released his summoning hold on the pair, letting their souls sink into their unconscious bodies.  Then he settled a hand on each of them, palms resting lightly against their chests.  Almost anything could burn, and bone was no exception, but it took a lot more to char bone than it did to burn most other things.  The heat he’d channeled into their souls hadn’t been nearly enough to cause that kind of damage.  He could do this, theoretically at least.  He just had to be careful about it.

The elemental’s own soul glowed brightly, lighting up his core with all the bright tones of flame.  It called to two souls mirrored in blue, not with a summons but with a plea.  And they responded.  The notes were faint, their song buried beneath a smothering blanket of shadow, but no less present.  Time and care had formed a connection between them, and it was through that bond that Grillby sent not only the heat of his fire magic but also its light.  

He sent his power into them.  His strength.  His love.  It surged a brilliant white, shining from inside their bones.  A dark smoke rose from the pair as the tainted magic inside them began to burn, permeating the space with an acrid stench.  Their small bodies grew warm beneath his touch.  Then the warmth shifted into heat and he had to pull back some of his power.  Too much and they would burn.  Not enough and the corruption would keep its deadly hold on them.  Grillby focused on the brightness of his own magic,  the potential in it and in him to bring not just destruction but warmth and light as well.  He channeled that light, filling the children he’d thought he lost with a brilliant luminescence strong enough to push back the darkness.  

And white lights flickered to life in dark eye sockets.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one left. Yes, the next (short) chapter will be the last one. I almost can’t believe that we’re nearly there! Admittedly I still have a lot (loooot) more to do on Ash and Bone, but this fic will be wrapped up after the next part. 
> 
> Also, sorry that I forgot to post this chapter as quickly as I should have. Holiday preparation takes up so much of your time. Plus I got called in to work a kids theater camp show so I had to devote a week to the lighting and sound of that (always worth it even if it does wipe me out). I'm finally catching up again though.

In a darkened cave within a forgotten corner of Hotland, a futile battle had become an unwinnable war.  The thing doctor Gaster had become let out a hideous screech of rage.  How dare these people take what was rightfully his?!  He swiped his hands, fingers stretched thin until they resembled overgrown claws, at the closest of his two opponents.  The canine warrior nimbly ducked out of the way of his attack as a sharp blade bit into his back.  He curved forward, bending in a way his former spine would have never allowed, to prevent himself from getting cleaved in half yet again.  

This was getting him nowhere.  He’d managed to get a few hits on the pair, raking new found claws across their limbs or smothering their faces with the black, tar-like substance he had at his command, but it was never enough.  When one fell, the other would swoop in to stop him from finishing them off.  No, he’d never get what he wanted this way … so he would stop playing this little game of theirs.  The soul shards had prevented him from taking them into the void, but nothing was stopping him now.  

Darkness pooled beneath him, invisible in the heavy shadows of the cavern.  But he knew it was there.  He sensed it in a way that went beyond sight.  Doctor Gaster smiled a wicked, triumphant grin.  He let himself fall backwards, twisting to avoid a battleaxe that cut through the air where his neck had been only moments ago, and descended through the portal.  

The void welcomed him.  He could feel its presence, greedy and grasping, wrapped around his distorted form.  But he could not allow himself to indulge in it for long.  They had stolen his prize from him, but he would get it back.  They couldn’t hide from him.  Nothing could.  

—-

Sans woke with the feeling of fire in his soul.  It should have been a painful and frightening thing, all creatures knew to fear fire after all, but it wasn’t.  He felt its warmth, a heat just shy of pain, working its way through every bone of his body.  It spread through him like flowing water, nothing at all like the crawling, cold slickness he’d been unable to break free of.  The tingling heat seeped into him bit by bit, unfurling from a core of something bright held close to his heart.  And in its wake, the heaviness he’d carried before burned away.  His eyelights flickered, showing him dim, blurry pictures of the space around him.  And as those images came into focus, he saw that same fire he’d felt flow through him.  

Grillby looked down at him.  At least that’s what Sans thought was happening, it was rather hard to tell sometimes.  The man leaned closer, seeming to speak if the flickering of his fire was any indication, but the world sounded muffled still and Sans could not make out the words.  Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him upwards.  He didn’t resist, wouldn’t have been able to even if he’d tried, and quickly found himself captured in a fierce embrace with someone else pressed close against him.  A thin hand brushed against his, warm, rough, and twitching.  Sans took it in his own and felt his brother’s fingers squeeze back.  

As his hazy vision cleared, he began to take in his surroundings.  He knew this place.  The once sterile lab was torn apart, equipment in shambles and every inch stained with drying black ooze, but still it was instantly recognizable.  This place would forever stay seared into his memories.  But those marred walls were now cast in a warm, flickering light.  Sans found his brother staring back at him, worn and weary but somehow still alive.  He saw Grillby, his fire dimmed but just as soothing as it always was.

And behind them, a dark, creeping shadow was rising.  

Papyrus must have seen the phantom as well, because the younger boy let out a frightened yelp.  Grillby glanced backwards, his grip on the skeletal pair becoming almost crushingly tight.  The darkness parted, pealing away from a figure emerging from it.  Pale face.  Pale hands.  Dead eyes.  

Grillby leapt into action, snatching the brothers away from the metal tables they’d woken up on and setting them back against the lab’s far wall.  He thrust both arms out and summoned his own power.  A series of burning balls of magic rocketed towards the doctor.  Gaster dodged the first few with ease, batting one aside with a widened, pierced palm, but the last few caught him in the shoulder.  He retreated only a step or so, hissing and smoking.  But the fire itself hadn’t vanished when the attack ended.  An overturned table caught first, then the ruined remains of a set of drawers.  Soon everything that could catch fire had, eager flames leaping from one thing to another as they painted the ruined lab in vibrant orange and endless black shadows.  

Gaster moved like a landslide, stretching himself thin as a wave of black sludge poured from him.  Grillby tried to dodge, firing another volley of projectiles, but the tricky scientist swept to the side too fast to follow and wrapped him in a coil of oozing darkness.  Blazing a bright yellow-orange, Grillby latched on to the tendril that ensnared him with both hands.  Smoke billowed from the places he touched, tainted flesh boiling in the heat, but even that did not stop the mad doctor.  His opponent was fast, but he was faster.

“No!,” Papyrus cried, his voice still weak and shaky, as the elemental’s light began to vanish beneath a wave of black.  “Stop!”

A different, paler smoke clouded the air.  Not that of burning poisoned magic, but of extinguished fire.  Sans was shaking so fiercely he could hardly hear the sounds of battle through his own rattling.  No, no, no!  This couldn’t be happening!  He had to stop it somehow.  But, not like this.  He was weak the way he was, small, slow, and fragile.  He couldn’t protect anyone this way.  Giving in to instinct, Sans reached for the magic within himself.  Yet when he sparked that familiar power, he found something else.  Something so much more.  

His body changed the way it always had, bones twisting and lengthening into a stronger, fiercer shape, and as it did the fire magic still lingering within him ignited.  He could feel the flames inside himself, flickering in his ribcage.  It should have hurt, but yet again, it didn’t.  This fire was a gift.  For however long it lasted, it was his, and what was his could not hurt him.  He pushed himself up on claw-tipped paws, giving himself a quick shake from nose to tail as the ragged remains of burnt clothing flaked off of him.  Trails of wispy flame escaped from his open jaws.  

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Papyrus rise as well, the other’s blaster beast form a little taller and longer than his own.  The younger skeleton normally couldn’t shift quite as quickly as he could, but this time it seemed as if he’d beaten Sans to it.  Bright flames danced in his eye sockets and flickered between the gaps in his ribs.  He growled with a ferociousness Sans had rarely ever seen from him.  

“Don’t hurt our dad!”

Bright light gathered in the younger boy’s open mouth.  Normally there was a faint core of blue in the white of his attack, barely visible underneath the intensity of charged magic, but not this time.  This time Papyrus blazed brilliant orange.  The fire inside him roared and a stream of burning energy shot out from his mouth.  It struck his target with pinpoint accuracy, searing a large hole through the curtain of living darkness Gaster had become.  

The doctor let out an otherworldly screech that seemed to echo in Sans’s skull.  He retreated, sliding away with frightening speed until he’d gathered his distorted form into a shuddering mound.  Now released from his smothering prison, Grillby fell to his knees on the ruined floor.  He was gasping, desperately drawing in oxygen to fan his dying flame.  It was frightening to see his light so faint, reduced to little more than darkened coals.  But, his light had already been dim before the doctor had found them.  So much of it was in Sans and Papyrus now.  

The brothers darted over to stand between the two men.  They were trembling and scared, unused to this new bright power that flooded them, but neither could bare to see the monster that had cared for them face this horror alone.  

“Stay back,” Papyrus snarled, though the doctor would not be able to understand him.

Gaster’s arm shot out like a whip, his fingers lengthening into sharp points.  He struck Papyrus, catching him in the side and sending him hurtling into the nearby wall.  Warped flesh sizzled on contact with the fires held inside the small boy, but it didn’t seem to matter to the doctor.  

Sans snarled and hissed.  His vision blurred from the force of energy resonating faster and faster inside him.  He sprung up, leaping between the man’s grasping, ruined hands and the people he would risk everything to protect.  The force of the blast that shot out of him sent him flying backwards.  Brilliant yellow fire flared around his usual white energy beam, transforming it into something new and dazzling.  And at its core, for just a moment, he thought he saw a flash of something violet.  Gaster tried to whirl away and dodge the blast, but this time he’d been caught off guard.  The beam struck him in the chest, burning deep into the oozing darkness his body had become.

Sans landed awkwardly, barely managing to stay on his feet as his claws left skidding scratches in the floor.  He panted for breath, little bursts of fire puffing out from between his teeth.  Where had that even come from?  Papyrus was struggling to his feet behind him, Grillby at the younger boy’s side making sure he was alright.  Sans was grateful for that, because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the doctor even for a moment.

Gaster straightened but staggered again before he’d even truly managed to rise.  Long, drooping arms wrapped around himself as he shuddered.  Brilliant blue tinged the fire in Sans’s eye as he let his sight shift.  He saw the magic around them, his and his sibling’s as well as what remained of their master’s.  And something else.  Something he still could not explain.  The second presence clinging to Gaster was writhing in agony, shuddering and pulling back as if trying to separate itself from him entirely, but something still tethered the two together.  And beyond the sickly shades he’d seen before, there was something new.  A brilliant purple magic had wrapped itself tight around Gaster.  It shimmered and squeezed, moving as if crawling along his back.  Had his attack done this?  

In his magic-sight, Sans saw the strained ties between the man and the entity, and that was where he aimed his next attack.  Magic pulsed bright inside him as the borrowed fire began to change, altering its hue to better match his own power.  It sang at a fever pitch within him, burning a brilliant blue with flashes of yellow leaping through the flames.  He could feel the burning heat of it in his throat and taste its raw energy.  He dug his claws into the already scratched floor.  His back arched, spine bending into a sturdy curve.  His lower jaw split open, flaring wide as he let out one last feral, clicking snarl.  And then, he let go.

A dazzling beam of yellow and blue burst from him with all the force of a cannon blast.  The entire room was washed in blinding light.  Magical energy seared the air.  The beam punched a hole through the doctor’s side, leaving a steaming, sizzling mass of black gore in its wake.  And as it ripped through him, it severed the strained ties binding the spectral figure to him.  The warped magic snapped, sending the ghostly figure backwards as it was finally released.  

Sans stared in awe as a dark, muddied stain began to fade from the other shape, draining away to reveal a yellow that resembled the magic that burned inside him.  The entity’s shape seemed to change as its color cleared, shrinking into something not so unlike a normal monster.  It blinked down at him, unreadable eyes no more than hazy spots of white.  And then it was gone, vanished from reality and magic-sight alike as if it had never been there in the first place.

The doctor, however, was still very much present.  His arms were wound around his wounded body, clinging even as inky blood squelched through his fingers.  His twisted face contorted into an expression not of pain but of anger.  Papyrus let out a little whimper at the sight of it, but still he inched forward, straining against Grillby’s attempts to keep him away from the battle.  The elemental reached for Sans as well, but the other skeleton stayed too far away to be restrained.  Grillby was too weak to fight against something like this.  He’d given too much of himself to the brothers, though Sans did not truly understand why.  He simply knew that the elemental’s strength rested in them, and for as long as that lasted he had to use it to protect his family.  

He was so focused on the doctor that Sans almost missed it when the scene around them began to change.  It was as if the shadows that clung to the room were receding.  They slowly compressed and closed in on themselves, dragging the skittering crawl of static with them.  And at the center of this darkened space, spreading out onto the floor, was a circle of pure, inky black.  Gaster slid forward unsteadily, his body wobbling, but when he tried to venture beyond this circle of shadows he stopped short.  No matter how he pulled, something far stronger held him back.  

Sans stalked forward, head low and shoulders hunched.  His tail lashed behind him.  Do not underestimate a weakened target, that’s what his training told him.  When your prey is down, do not look away from them.  When they are cornered, do not think they are out of options.  Always take any free shot presented to you.  And always, always, strike the final blow.  He let out a huff of air, small plumes of blue flame rising from him.  The doctor had taught him all these things.  For once, he was going to do as he was told.  His core started to glow brighter as his magic began to resonate.  

“Sans,” Grillby said, the soft crackle of his voice cutting through the haze of the boy’s anger as easily as any scream.  

The elemental beckoned him away, holding out his hand in obvious invitation.  Sans didn’t want to listen.  A good hunter doesn’t leave their prey without being sure that the job is done.  You don’t leave a threat alive!  Sans turned his attention to Papyrus.  Surely his brother would understand … right?  But what he saw in those fire-lit eyes was hesitant and unsure.  Papyrus didn’t want to kill, and he didn’t want Sans to do the deed either.  

The darkness was drawing Gaster in now, his ruined body sinking into nothingness despite his best efforts to escape.  He deserved so much worse for what he’d done.  With a soft growl, Sans released his control on the magic inside him and let the resonance fade away.  He wasn’t better than this, not really.  Deep down he knew he was a weapon, meant only to hunt and kill just the way his master wanted.  But for Papyrus and Grillby, he could pretend to be something better.

Suddenly, a blur of movement from behind him caught Sans’s attention.  The doctor reached for him, arms stretching far beyond their natural limits.  He tried to scramble away but wasn’t quite fast enough.  An oozing hand latched onto him, wrapping tight around his spine.  It yanked him all too easily off his feet.

“You,” Gaster hissed, his voice all but lost to the rising roar of static pouring from both him and the clawing darkness.  And yet, Sans understood him just the same.  The words carved themselves into his mind, invasive and accusatory.  “You did this.”

“No,” Sans yelped in defiance.  He thrashed and kicked, yet he could not free himself of the monster’s grasp.  

“Y o u r  f a u l t.”

The purple energy clinging to Gaster pulsed, draining the strength and life out from him, but the man held on with all he had.  The arm withdrew, beginning to reel Sans in towards the endless black pit that would claim his master.  This close, Sans could sense something in that black pit.  It was a twisted, writhing wrongness.  It did not belong in this world, and neither did the man sinking into it.  

Sans’s claws scratched uselessly on the floor.  No matter how he fought, he could not manage to break free.  And even if he had the speed and focus to fire off a blast, he couldn’t turn his head enough to direct it where it needed to go.  His soul raced as he began to hyperventilate, the fire inside him flaring and dimming wildly.    

Then the familiar scrape of bone on bone cut through his panic as long claws laced themselves through the gaps in his exposed ribs.  Papyrus threw his weight backwards, dragging Sans with him.  The younger skeleton whined as his back legs slipped, but a few scrambling steps was all it took for him to try again.  Sans tried to reach for him, but while his beastly limbs were far stronger than his other form’s they were no good at grasping.  He shifted easily, claws melting into small, thin fingers before he’d even fully realized what he was doing.  He wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck and held on tight.  

Something hot clutched his arm as Grillby joined in as well.  “Just hold on,” he said, straining from the effort it took to fight against the doctor’s pull, “we’ve got you.”

The elemental seized Gaster’s wrist with his free hand, pouring all the heat he had left into burning the offending limb away, but the doctor refused to release his final prize.  Violet magic pulsed once more, and a shudder ran through his entire distorted frame.  Grillby let go suddenly, gasping as the warped appendage began to fade and flicker.  Pale digits that had once been bone turned ghostly and, to their collective horror, began to sink in to the spine beneath them.  

Sans gasped as a shot of icy cold spread through his vertebrae.  He lurched forward, dragging himself a fraction of an inch away from the hungry shadows, but the feeling of the man’s grip on him, IN him, would not budge.  He felt the iciness flow outwards, swirling itself around lingering heat.  His spine tingled where the hand had phased into him, and that sensation was spreading.  

“You can’t have him,” growled Papyrus.  The fire in his eye sockets roared a brilliant orange.  Sans could hear the resonance inside him.  Its pitch sang strong and clear, his own bones vibrating under its influence.  

A burst of brilliant fire poured from his open mouth.  The roaring force of it shooting just above Sans was almost unbearably hot.  The flames struck true, catching Gaster in the face and chest.  He reeled backwards, letting out a garbled, fizzling wail.  The fingers latched around Sans released and he shuddered as he felt their ghostly essence pull away from his own.  

With nothing more restraining him, Sans suddenly tumbled forward into his rescuers.  Grillby was the first to free himself from the pile, easily scooping up both children and retreating as far away from the screaming doctor as they could get.  

Gaster writhed as he sank into the darkness below him.  A hand slapped down hard on the floor, its mass squishing into a grotesque splatter even as the arm connected to it bent up at a sickening angle.  Then another limb repeated the motion.  And another.  And another.  Long, inky appendages strained against the pull of the shadows, bracing him like a spider in a web.  

A loud barking echoed in the enclosed space.  Sans jumped, feeling Papyrus jolt similarly beside him.  He hadn’t heard them approach, but now through the consuming fires that raged through the lab he could make out the dark cloaks and pale fur of Dogaressa and Dogamy.  The guards were panting hard, sweat dampening their fur as they leapt over the rubble blocking their path.  Dogaressa faced the squirming mass of poisoned magic that had once been doctor Gaster, her weapon drawn and ready, as her mate rushed towards the three of them.  

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Dogamy shouted over the roar of crackling flame and screeching static.  “This place won’t last long.”  

Sans didn’t protest as the guardsman reached for him, though Grillby did hesitate a moment or two before allowing the other monster to take Sans into his arms.  Then they were up and moving, dodging around flaming debris and writhing black tendrils much faster than the skeleton’s short legs could hope to go.  A flailing inky limb arched towards them and Sans flinched, bracing himself for a impact, but the blow never landed.  Instead, Dogaressa’s trusty blade cleaved it in half before it could reach them.  

Once they were safely across the ruined room and onto the mercifully still intact steps, Dogamy howled a signal.  The long, low note carried over the cacophony of noise echoing off the laboratory walls.  Dogaressa glanced back, her white teeth flashing in a relieved smile.  She swung her battleaxe in one last, low arc, the blade chopping through two of the inky tendrils and tearing deeply into a third, but did not stay to observe the results of her actions.  

As she turned and sprinted away, vaulting over a chunk of burning furniture, the thing Gaster had become screeched.  He pitched sideways, too many of his all important anchors severed and melting into harmless puddles.  The spindly limbs that could no longer secure him flailed madly through the air.  One began to whip towards Dogaressa only to be blasted away by a short burst of fiery energy from Papyrus.  Sans, unable to fire his own beams in this form, channeled his magic into projectiles instead and tore through the remaining limbs.  Purple magic flashed around the doctor, its tendrils locked around him as they drained his very life away.  

Sans pressed his hands over his skull, but it did nothing to block out the sound of his master’s last, desperate cries.  The shadows drew him in, sucking his body down into their endless darkness until the final traces of what was once white bone vanished beneath the inky sea, swallowed up by a darkness so complete that not even light could escape it.  The edges of the pool began to sizzle, the encroaching fire’s heat making its pitch black ooze begin to boil and recede.  A pawlike hand forced Sans to look away, pressing his face against torn, bloodied fabric.  

“Time to go pup,” Dogamy whispered to him as he followed Grillby up the steps.  

Behind them, the last traces of static faded away, replaced by the snapping roar of fire.  


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I’m still not entirely happy with this but theater work and holiday shopping have derailed me far more than I’d like lately so you know what? good enough. CHAPTER TIME!
> 
> This last part ends To Last the Night. I really hope that you’ve enjoyed reading it and its predecessor. I wanted to say one final THANK YOU~!! to everyone who’s liked or reblogged or sent nice comments because really you guys are the absolute best. And a super special thanks to the wonderful spacegate whose fantastic ideas, writing, and art inspired this work and whose support meant and still means more than words can say. You are amazing!
> 
> Now the big question is; can I get anything done on my other fic? I’m sure gonna try to.

“Door,” a voice sang out, echoed by a small, high pitched howl that rang through the apartment above Grillby’s bar.  “Someone’s at the door!”  

“Alright, I’ll be right there.”  

The owner of both the home and the joined establishment smoothed barely visible wrinkles from his pressed white shirt as he strolled towards the front door.  He was all but certain that he already knew who was about to arrive and that they wouldn’t care or even notice if he was a bit disheveled from work, but the instinct to make sure he looked presentable wasn’t to be ignored regardless.  

Sans and Papyrus were already there when he arrived.  The taller of the two was all but scratching at the wooden surface, excited by the approaching sounds he heard from beyond it.  These days it was nothing new to see the pair so excited, especially Papyrus who hopped from fixation to fixation with all the energy and enthusiasm of an over-caffeinated bunny.  And yet, this everyday sight was still something wondrous to Grillby.  He’d never have imagined a life like this when he’d first met the pair, nor the dangers he’d have to face it in order to keep it.

It had been many long months since they’d escaped from what was now a lonely, burnt out shell of a house on the outskirts of Hotland.  In many ways, the incident and the disturbing sequence of events that had preceded it felt so distant.  Some days he had to remind himself that it hadn’t all been some terrible nightmare or a story he’d read in a book years ago.  But then he’d notice something small, like burn marks on wooden floors or the way the children would sometimes flinch at the shadows that had once felt so comforting to them, and the reality of it all would leave him staggered.  It had been real.  The scattered snippets of memory he clung to had actually happened despite the tricks his mind was constantly trying to play on him.  And the mysterious erasure of it all was just as real.

At last Grillby heard a knock.  It was difficult trying to convince Papyrus that waiting for someone to knock before inviting them in was the polite thing to do but he was trying none the less.  He opened the door and the smiling faces of the pair he’d expected to see beamed back at him.

“Sorry to come over without calling first,” Dogaressa said.  

“Think nothing of it,” Grillby replied, “you’re always welcome here.”  

The exchange was nothing short of habit at this point, something that had started as a formality and was now so practiced that the two of them said their parts automatically.  The words were different from time to time, but it was all simple variations of the same pleasantries.  It didn’t really matter, yet both of them kept up the act if only as a convenient conversation starter.  

“How’re the little flamethrowers?” Dogamy asked with a snicker.

Though much of their ordeal was already lost to the three adults, obscured by the haze that wiped away their memories of the mysterious and dangerous person behind it all, some important things still persisted.  The sight of the children wreathed in flame was one of them.  Burning the poison out of them had been a serious risk, and though Grillby could not recall all of the reasons he’d been forced to take that risk he was grateful that things had turned out as well as they had.  It had also resulted in some interesting temporary side effects.  Fire magic, as it turns out, likes to linger, and the pair had taken to it so well that it was weeks before the last of the colorful flames vanished from them.  Even now they were still prone to the odd, infrequent flareup.    

Papyrus crossed his arms and whined, voicing his childish displeasure at the nickname.  It only served to make Dogamy laugh harder.  Grillby nudged him a little, prompting him to remember what he’d learned about greeting people.  “We’re … aah … we’re … “

“we’re good,” Sans said for him.  

The younger skeleton huffed and shot him a look that even Grillby knew meant ‘I could have gotten it.’  But like most altercations between the siblings, the slight was quickly forgotten.  Papyrus chattered in a mix of puppy yips and trills as he dragged Dogamy towards the living room.  No doubt he was excited to show off the pictures he’d drawn the other day or share his latest 'discoveries’.  Grillby and Dogaressa shared a knowing look, somehow managing to contain their amusement.  When they looked back, Sans was gone.  He’d vanished in the blink of an eye, and if Dogamy’s surprised yelp was any indication he was already back in the other room waiting for them.  

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” Dogaressa said fondly, looking at the empty space where Sans had just been.  

“You and me both.”  

Grillby wondered if something in the boy’s magic had shifted due to his ordeal, unlocking another facet to his powers, or if he’d been capable of this all along and had simply been too secretive to show it.  He didn’t think it mattered all that much in the long run.  However he’d come to possess the power, Sans was at least responsible with it.  It helped that he could only transport himself short distances, at least for now.  

Now that they were alone in the relative quiet of the hallway, Dogaressa pulled a book from one of the large, hidden pockets of her robe.  “I brought you a copy of the record.  I think at this point it’s as complete as it’s ever going to be.”

“Thank you,” Grillby said as he took the offered item.  It wasn’t much, just an average sized journal bound in leather, but it felt heavy with the weight of the secrets it contained.  “Did you come up with any more details?”

“One or two, but I don’t think they were all that important.”  

The two of them retreated to the kitchen, leaving Dogamy to entertain Sans and Papyrus in the living room.  Grillby poured his guest a cup of tea and set the steaming mug in front of her.  The journal sat untouched between them.

“Do you still remember much?” he asked, though a part of him wished he hadn’t.  Even talking about the incident could be an unpleasant experience, leaving him with a dull roar of a headache that lingered until the fog once more rolled over his fractured memories.

“Not really,” Dogaressa sighed, “Dogamy and I keep reminding each other, but every day there’s more pieces missing.”  She gazed down at the book, her claws tapping restlessly on the ceramic mug.  “Reading this now, it feels like it all happened to someone else.”

Grillby nodded in silent agreement.  He was grateful that the guards had each other to keep themselves grounded and remind one another of the man that reality itself seemed to want to erase.  More than that though, he was grateful that they did the same for him.  

“How about you,” Dogaressa asked once she managed to pull herself from her own tangled thoughts, “what have you got left?”

“Not as much as I’d like.  But, at least I have the boys to remind me of the important things.”

“They still remember, huh?” she said, regret barely hidden behind a sympathetic smile.

“Every part of it.”

For reasons beyond Grillby’s understanding, Sans and Papyrus weren’t forgetting their ordeal or the man responsible the way he and the guards were.  However, it seemed that they were alone in that unfortunate distinction.  Every other trace of the ex-royal scientist’s existence was swiftly becoming lost to time.  Each record that had been uncovered was distorted at best and missing large sections of otherwise carefully preserved information at worst.  Former colleagues knew only of his reputation, having neither a name or a face to associate with the deeds left behind even if they had been present for them.  The incident in Hotland had been written off as a freak accident even after Grillby and the guards personally explained their involvement multiple times.  Even the bar’s regular patrons believed that Grillby had been away on some sort of vacation during the whole ordeal despite him never saying anything of the sort to anyone.  

No one could remember the truth, only the convenient lies that had slipped in to take its place.  No one except Sans and Papyrus.  The details remained with them in startling clarity even as they vanished from the world around them.  It didn’t seem fair that the ones most hurt by the former royal scientist were the only ones who could never forget him.  

“Why did that guy come for them anyway?” Dogaressa asked.  “I know he created them, though I’m still not sure how, but this?”  She briefly pressed a hand to the journal’s unmarked cover.  “This was madness.  Who would go to such lengths for … what?  Revenge?”

Grillby rested his elbows on the table as he looked down at the journal.  Madness, huh?  It seemed like a fairly apt description based off what he himself could recall, and no doubt the details transcribed on those pages painted an even more twisted tale.  He didn’t know what could drive a monster to do something like that, nor did he want to, but simple revenge didn’t seem right.  He thought of a mysterious connection the kids spoke of in hushed, trembling whispers.  Of night terrors seen through the eyes of another and what should have been paranoid assumptions stated as absolute fact.  Of ruined souls with crystalline cores.  “I think there was some part of him in the boys.  Pieces of himself that he used when he created them.”

Dogaressa’s shoulders hunched reflexively, her fur bristling as she clenched her fist around the coffee cup’s handle.  “They’re nothing like him.”

“That’s true,” Grillby said, all too eager to agree with that sentiment, “But maybe there’s something in them that’s like the man he used to be.  The royal scientist that existed before all this.  If he really accomplished all that we think he did, like build the Core, then there had to be some good things about him.”

Dark eyes narrowed, not with anger but with a reluctance that the elemental could more than understand.  “If that’s the case, then we know where those good things ended up.”

It was a wild theory to be sure, something he’d never consider under normal circumstances, but it fit too well with the broken pieces of the story that unseen forces had seen fit to allow them.  He wondered if they were right and the royal scientist had unknowingly sacrificed all his best qualities in the creation of Sans and Papyrus.  And now, that was all that remained of him.  Grillby didn’t know if it was true, or even possible, but it was an oddly poetic thought.  

“Any luck with the name?” Dogaressa asked, shifting the topic to one that didn’t make her bristle quite so much.

“Unfortunately no.”  Grillby slumped a little in his chair.  Even now, as he tried to recall that missing name and was met with only a blank space in his mind, he was beginning to feel a familiar twinge that meant a headache was fast approaching.  “When they say it, all I hear is this … static.  Even having the kids write it down doesn’t work.  It just turns into nonsense.  I know they aren’t doing it on purpose.  Sometimes I can even make out the first few letters.  But then … ”  He waved a hand dismissively.

Dogaressa let out a sigh, leaning heavily on the table.  “I wish I understood this.”

Grillby wished he could do more for her.  It wasn’t that this didn’t bother him as well, it most certainly did.  How could anyone not be distressed when their own mind betrays them like that?  But his friends, especially Dogaressa herself, were taking it much harder than he was.  He thought it might have something to do with their positions as royal guards.  The pair saw it as their solemn duty to protect all of Snowdin.  Knowing that two of their own had been snatched away and tortured by a madman they’d been unable to stop was clearly weighing heavily on them.  Even when the last details of that man had been wiped from their minds, he was almost certain that the guilt would remain, a directionless and desperate need to protect hanging over the pair forever.  

But those details and the raw horror they carried would fade.  Each passing day pulled them further and further away from their grasp, leaving them with only vague reminders that contradicted the evidence surrounding them.  Almost as if they were fighting an uphill battle against reality itself.  The royal scientist had become something unfit for this plane of existence, and so it rejected him entirely.  For a fleeting moment Grillby remembered the twisted horror that the man had become, dead eyes leaking streams of living shadow.  Then pain blossomed in his mind, magic fire flickering as the headache that had threatened him before took hold in full, and the nightmare dissolved into meaningless distress.  

“Maybe it’s best that we forget.”

“But what if he comes back?” Dogaressa asked, not even trying to hide the fearful tension that the thought brought with it.  

“If even half of what we’ve recorded here is true, I doubt he will.  Besides, the boys said he’s gone, and I believe them.”

“Now that’s surprising,” she said with an amused little huff.  “Those paranoid pups really think he won’t be back?”

“From what I understand, there used to be some sort of connection between them and the doctor.  I guess that must be how he kept finding them.”  It had taken a few long discussions for that particular piece of information to stick, but eventually it had.  Grillby simply had to place his focus kids rather than the man who had made them.  They spoke of a bond like an invisible thread, linking the pair of them together and tethering them to the one they feared most.  It had stretched thin, they said, pulled as if through immeasurable distance, until it could no longer be seen or felt at all.  Now only the tie between the brothers remained.  Sans had looked up at him with a rare and genuine smile, one eye socket lit up with dazzling blue, and Grillby hadn’t had the heart to question his claim.  

“I think I remember something like that in the book.”  Dogaressa shook her head, letting out a frustrated growl under her breath.  “I’m even forgetting things about the pups now?”

Grillby reached across the table and gently took the mug from her clenched hands before she could accidentally crack it.  “It’ll get easier.  At least, I think so.  Whatever happened back there, it’s erased the doctor from our world.  The three of us remember more than we should, even with everything we’ve forgotten.”  And if his migraines were any indication, that likely wasn’t a good thing.  He didn’t know how long they could hold out against it, or if they should even try.  “Anyway, with him gone it erased that connection as well.  Sans and Papyrus can’t sense him anymore.  They seem fairly confident that it means he’s really gone.”

Dogaressa chuckled.  “And who are we to argue with that?”

From elsewhere in the apartment they could hear a distant thud and a young voice raised not in alarm but in shrill delight.  It sounded like Papyrus was bouncing off the walls in the living room.  Perhaps literally.  

“Should we go save Dogamy?” Grillby asked, lighthearted amusement helping to drive his headache into submission.  

Dogaressa grinned, subtle and sincere.  “In a bit.”

In a little while, they would brave the chaos of the living room to rejoin the others, completing a mismatched family of three and the friends who were as close as family to them.  They would indulge childish enthusiasm and celebrate curiosity, making the time to listen to every question, concern, and story.  They would do their best to give the children the life they deserved and pave the way for a kinder future far away from their nightmares.  

There would be time for all of it in the safety that their blood and tears had bought them.  But for now, these two friends were content to sit together in comfortable silence, the journal lying untouched between them.


End file.
